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Claes OldenburgSculpture in the Form of a Bicycle Saddle Claes Oldenburg surreal pop sculpture1976
1976
About the Item
Playful, surreal Claes Oldenburg sculpture re-contextualizing a ceramic bicycle seat as a small mountain or geological feature, sitting on a bed of sand atop a square mahogany base. The ceramic component is cast from an actual bicycle seat with sculptural additions.
Claes Oldenburg describes the project:
“A bicycle seat, like a three-way electric plug, is an industrial object with the potential of becoming a sculpture. Another example is the World War I cannon meticulously carved in stone and placed by itself on a pedestal near Hyde Park Corner in London. I heard this monument was a favorite of Dubuffet.
The bicycle seat was to have been an outdoor object-sculpture in London, commissioned by Paul Cornwall-Jones for placement in front of his office on Petersburg Place near the northwest end of Kensington Gardens. As I imagined it, the seat-which in England became the saddle— would be carved of marble in a nineteenth-century cemetery style, with the surface of the saddle emerging like the polished representation of flesh out of rough stone.
The role of a bicycle seat as sculpture goes back, of course, to Picasso's Head of a Bull (1943). I had drawn a variation of this work on a napkin in a London restaurant, substituting a sliced strawberry for the seat. The merging of these shapes seat and upended strawberry slice-turned Bicycle Saddle into a sculpture in the round, able to stand independently without a base.
Meanwhile, I had been shown experiments in ceramic sculpture conducted at the Royal College of Art under the direction of David Queensberry. Since Bicycle Saddle now had a form somewhat like a bottle, it seemed like a suitable subject for the medium, and a hollow version struck me as an interesting complement to the solid one.
As it turned out, the large marble version was never executed, due in part to the difficulty of obtaining permission for any new outdoor sculpture in London. The small version went ahead on its own as a kind of miniature of a larger work that might have been.” –Claes Oldenburg
Sculpture in the Form of a Bicycle Saddle,1976
Glazed cast ceramic, mahogany, sand
14 x 8 1/2 x 8 1/2 in / 35.3 x 21.5 x 21.5 cm (variable)
Edition of 36 in three color variants (12 each in green, brown, black; with 9 AP, 3 each in green, brown, black)
initialed in gold ink and numbered 6/36
Fabricated by The Royal College of Art, London; Published by Petersburg Press, London and New York
Condition: Ceramic saddle in excellent condition, base in good condition with light wear and a minor chip to the base, as photographed.
Catalogue reference: Platzker 17
- Creator:Claes Oldenburg (1929, American, Swedish)
- Creation Year:1976
- Dimensions:Height: 14 in (35.56 cm)Width: 8.5 in (21.59 cm)Depth: 8.5 in (21.59 cm)
- Medium:Ceramic,Mahogany
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:Ceramic saddle in excellent condition, base in good condition with light wear and a minor chip to the base, as photographed.
- Gallery Location:New York, NY
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU1211215961792
Claes Oldenburg
One of the original Pop artists, Claes Oldenburg was born in Stockholm. The son of a Swedish diplomat, he spent his early years in Stockholm and Oslo until the family moved to Chicago in 1937.
Oldenburg attended Yale University, then returned to Chicago, where he worked for a newspaper and also attended drawing classes at the Art Institute. He moved to New York in 1956.
Oldenburg’s early art in New York were works of urban realism in cardboard and paper that were influenced by the work of Dubuffet and the New Realists, and were seen as a brutal response to society. In 1961 Oldenburg rented a storefront on the Lower East Side and sold brightly painted plaster objects as well as three-dimensional and wall reliefs based on hamburgers, pastries, men's and women's clothing, and other commodities. The signature soft sculptures followed, objects of commonplace household objects made of vinyl or canvas stuffed with kapok. These pieces transformed the medium — the soft sculptures are intended to be sensual experiences and commentary on our material world of objects and our relationship to them.
In 1965, still working in vinyl, plaster and cardboard, Oldenburg began making large works termed “Colossal Monuments,” which are large public sculptures with public and private meanings. In the 1970s, Oldenburg was fabricating large-scale works in durable materials such as steel, and working with Coosje van Bruggen, he had received many such public commissions in the United States and Europe.
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(Biography provided by Art Commerce)
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