This is a part of the Wikipedia article used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). Duchamp is known for calling a thing art, rather than making it. In 1962 he began creating a series of happenings, i.e., experimental presentations involving sound, movement, objects, and people. Sculpture, an artistic form in which hard or plastic materials are worked into three-dimensional art objects. Oldenburg lives and works in New York. There he met a number of artists, including Jim Dine, Red Grooms, and Allan Kaprow, whose happenings incorporated theatrical aspects and provided an alternative to the abstract expressionismthat had come to dominate much of the art scene. In 1956 he moved to New York City, where he became fascinated with the elements of street life: store windows, graffiti, advertisements, and trash. Claes’s birth flower is Carnation and birthstone is Garnet. But Oldenburg's spirited art found first a niche then a great popularity that endures to this day. By 1962, Oldenburg began creating soft sculptures from fabric, kapok (a soft material that was used to stuff furniture at that time), and foam rubber. In other words he takes ordinary things, like a stamp, and alters it into a colossal sculpture. Let’s find out! The sculptor Claes Oldenburg was born in Stockholm but grew up in Chicago, went to Yale and came to New York in 1956, where he became a key player in the pop art … Oldenburg began toying with the idea of soft sculpture in 1957, when he completed a free-hanging piece made from a woman's stocking stuffed with newspaper. Claes Oldenburg (born January 28, 1929) is an American sculptor, best known for his public art installations typically featuring large replicas of everyday objects. His first wife (1960–1970) Patty Mucha, who sewed many of his early soft sculptures, was a constant performer in his happenings. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. In 1956, he moved to New York, and for a time worked in the library of the Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration, where he also took the opportunity to learn more, on his own, about the history of art. ... Oldenburg working out in his studio. Three-Way Plug, Scale A (Soft), Prototype in Blue, 1971. He also opened his own studio and, in 1953, became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Much of Oldenburg’s early life was spent in the United States, Sweden, and Norway, a result of moves his father made as a Swedish consular official. They later divorced. Read full biography. Advertisement. Claes Oldenburg was born on January 28, 1929 in Stockholm, the son of Gösta Oldenburg and his wife Sigrid Elisabeth née Lindforss. Oldenburg's first show that included three-dimensional works, in May 1959, was at the Judson Gallery, at Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square. An enormous variety of media…. Oldenburg and Van Bruggen made these Giant Typewriter Erasersfrom 1989-1990. With van Bruggen, Oldenburg created such large-scale sculptures as Spoonbridge and Cherry (1985–88) for the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, as well as a soft sculpture of an oversized shuttlecock specially for a 1995 retrospective of his work at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. He was educated at Yale University (1946–50), where writing was his main interest, and he worked from 1950 to 1952 as an apprentice reporter for the City News Bureau in Chicago. OLDENBURG: Of course, Duchamp does come into it. (The piece was untitled when he made it but is now referred to as Sausage.) For some of his happenings Oldenburg created giant objects made of cloth stuffed with paper or rags. He was born in 1920s, in Silent Generation. Another theme in his work is soft sculpture versions of everyday objects. Claes Oldenburg, Clothespin, 1976. 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