and Coosje van Bruggen

THE MENIL COLLECTION May 9-0ctober 11, 2009 rawings On Site" showcases drawings for site-specific public monuments conceived and proposed over the past thirty years by the American artists Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. They represent the end stage of a singularly conceived artistic practice based on a radical reinterpretation of disegno (idea), as the generative force behind the creation of large-scale sculp­ ture and drawing as work in its own right. When Oldenburg first began to work with van Bruggen in 1976, his drawings were an integral component of an already well-formed oeuvre. Oldenburg was by then established as an innovator of American Pop Art. He had begun to propose public landmarks in the form of drawings of imaginary monumental of common, often discarded, objects as early as the mid-1960s. At the time he did not consider these works, which he called Proposals for Colossal Monuments, feasible; they stopped at drawing. Nevertheless, each was a serious critique of the solemnity and inert character of most traditional public , and he continued to fantasize in his drawings about non-artistic objects as colossal monuments. Sculpture was his subject, a possible medium real­ ized at first only in drawing and its conventions. But by the mid-1970s, he had realized four proposals for large-scale sculptures, beginning with f. Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks, 1969, at Yale University. Van Bruggen was not initially a visual artist but a Dutch art historian, curator, and critic. Her collaboration with Oldenburg began with the siting of Trowel I, 1976, at the Rijksmuseum Kroller-Mi.iller in Otterlo, the . The first sculpture on which van Bruggen collaborated Balancing Tools, Position Study, 1983. Pencil, crayon, tape, and collage on paper, from its inception was Pool Balls, 1977, for the "Skulptur" exhibition in 22 x l9:Ys inches. Photo' See Spot Run, Inc., Toronto Munster, Germany. By 1978, as partners in marriage and full artistic collaborators, they decided to concentrate their efforts on realizing large-scale, site-specific sculptures. Van Bruggen brought a distinctive sculptures with technicians and fabricators. Van Bruggen's participation combination of practical and conceptual skills to the task. changed the context of the work; her sharp analyses and balanced sense Oldenburg realized his drawing could no longer represent his fan­ of values became an instrument for the renewal and transformation of tasies alone. He adapted the process of imaginative elaboration to allow its premises. room for his collaborator. Since Oldenburg had always functioned by a Once Oldenburg assumed the task of visually representing their process of free association, both verbal and visual, and van Bruggen's joint enterprise, he recast himself as draftsman-an instmment in the medium had originally been language, their meeting ground was a form production of his and van Bruggen's work. Although Oldenburg had of interactive free association, evoking poetic forms. He noted that at previously represented his sculptures in differing states, employing a this time he welcomed the oppmtunity for a whole new set of "rules" as broad range of stylistic devices which called fmth different kinds of a way to renew himself and his work. Oldenburg had long since given up drawing from the author, a new set of rules for drawing specifically working in the more subjective and anarchic mode of his earlier partici­ for each assignment was implemented. It called upon several previous patmy work in Happenings and Environments, as well as in creating soft drawing styles, but sharply re-delineated their roles to conform to the sculptures out of canvas, and had for some years been making larger realization of large-scale, site-specific sculptures. reviously, in his barrier-breaking installation works, such "technical" drawings developed for tl1e fabJicator; and "baroque" drawings as The Street, 1960, Oldenburg explored how work in three for posters to announce the projects. The process also included actual dimensions could be literally torn and built layer by layer working drawings for the fabricator; these formed a sub-category in from contour drawing and moved into real space. He called themselves as purely technical-that is to say not intentionally "stylistic." The Street a mural in three dimensions, depicting fragments of life in At times, small-scale models also took the place of drawing. his gritty, litter-strewn, Lower East Side neighborhood in New York. The dravvings of tl1e monument fantasies represent a hyperbolic history The installation was a realization of the metamo1phoses of drawing into of styles and their mateJial and formal metamorphoses as tl1ey engage a spatial experience in which one could be physically located. Volumet­ with one another on the page and over time. And each style is an ironic rically conceived objects followed in The Store, 1961, in which glisten­ view, a revival of a style whose lifecycle, as Oldenburg has noted, has run ing representations of food, clothing, and other consumer goods made its course from primitive to perfect and tlwn to a stage of decline. The of plaster and painted with brightly colored, shiny enamel were on sale drawings in this exhibition represent a particular stage of realization both in a mock retail space. of sculpture and of drawing commenta1y: tl1e moment when Oldenburg As to drawing, he later wrote: "The periods of the Street, Store and is alone in his studio, having worked tl1rough tl1e collaborative process. Home are systematic explorations of, successively: Line/Plane, Color, He is then making drawing for its own sake and is free to enjoy the Volume-an analysis of elements of drawing, using correlative subjects medium and the particular reality it represents. in my immediate surroundings."1 And as the critic Barbara Rose has In all of these works there are hybrids, witty takes on conventions of noted about his Street objects, Oldenburg saw the paper itself as a representation and media. In Clarinet Bridge, Two Positions, 1992, an metaphor for the sidewalks, walls, and gutters; no differentiation was imaginative evocation of a realized monument, gestures are made with made between the human and material wreckage encountered on the an eraser; as in the manner of Matisse, Oldenburg elicits form by taking street. In other words, art is the metaphor for reality. away, as well as putting down his material. This technical approach is also According to Oldenburg, "Style in drawing is the re-creation in evidenced by the cut-and-pasted tracings in Balancing Tools, Position shorthand and graph of the terms of one's physical vision. I was trying Study, 1983, and again in another form-that is, straightforward linear to make an abstract of my vision."2 As the drawings in this exhibition contour-in Study for Collapsed European Postal Scale, 1990, where it is demonstrate, Oldenburg's vision and his attitudes to style in drawing embellished by a soft wash. Freely inventive calligraphy is a feature of a have remained constant, while proving themselves to be flexible and evolutionary. Although she did not draw, as the partner to conception, van Bruggen was singularly placed to reevaluate the process of drawing as basic to their (re)creation of new forms of vision. Each project began with an exchange of images and words, often referring to earlier objects, with Oldenburg sketching a "spontaneous first thought." These sketches were notations of formal and iconographic analogies between apparently unlike objects, evoking metamorphic and antl1ropom01phic variations. As van Bruggen noted, "It is impossible to break tl1e link with appearances ... abstract forms \vill be associated with appearances, no matter what."3 The outlines of circles, pyramids, and rectangles as a universalizing geometry are infinitely evocative as a basic formal vocabulary when subjected to the world of appearances and the passage of time. Once a subject was decided, other styles and modes of drawing were called upon to serve the vmious stages of project develop­ ment. These included "presentation" drawings in color for the client, a variation on "architectural" drawings tl1at visualize the object in scale Clarinet Bridge, Two Positions, 1992. Charcoal on paper, 30 Vs x 50 inches. in its surroundings from various situations and viewpoints; a gloss on Photo: Ellen Page Wilson, New York lawn of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of A1t in Kansas City. Also in Kansas City, The Liberty War Mem01ial, 1926, includes sphinxes that served as inspiration, contributing to a round robin of discourse through associa­ tion. The mane of Shuttlecock/Sphinx, in Wind, 1999, recalls the hair of the mythical Medusa; the Lion's paws and tail are transcribed into asparagus as a motif for Proposed Sculpture in the Fonn of Asparagus, for Fireplace of Pavilion Four, 1997. Together, Oldenburg and van Bmggen realized some forty-five public projects all across the , and in Europe and Asia. "Drawings on Site" was formulated in collaboration with both artists. The title is not intended to suggest that Oldenburg was working outdoors, sur le motif, as did Monet, but rather as shortl1and for drawings proposing objects sited in a variety of situations, botl1 actual and imaginary, as conceived by Oldenburg and van Bruggen. As the show itself was in formation, van Bruggen succumbed to the illness that she had been fighting for some years. The exhibition is pre­ sented as a hibute to her and as a celebration of the many fruitful years of her creative involvement in one of the most important artistic collab­

Study for Collapsed Europea11 Postal Scale, 1990. Pencil and watercolor on paper, 30 x 40 inches orations of modernist and post-modernist art. number of drawings in various mate1ials, including pencil in Leajboat Study, Stann in the Studio II, 1992; pastel and charcoal in French Horn, Unwound, on Ground, 2001; and all three in Stamp Blotters on Shattered Desk Pad, 1990. According to Oldenburg, "A large pmt of the pleasure of drawing is the awareness of shifting scale. Drawing is miniaturistic, but while drawing one imagines differences of scale. One effect of the monument drawings is an imaginary expansion of the drawing scale. The function of these drawings is to depict, like an impressionistic photograph."4 Leafboat Study, Storm in Studio II quotes the style of early unfeasible monumental drawings. Leafboat, Sited in the Tuileries, , 2001, is a late version of an unfeasible monument that steals its stylistic bent from the conventions of romantic French printmaking, despite the fact that it is rendered in charcoal and pastel. It is among the "presentation" draw­ ings of objects that appear in situ in various parts of the world. Also included among these is a series of drawings of sphinxes, conceived by van Bruggen and drawn by Oldenburg, in homage to the sphinx sculp­ tures at the Chateau de Chenonceau, in the Loire Valley. The trans­ formation of the mane and head of the lion-sphinx into badminton shuttlecocks in Shuttlecock/Sphinx, in Wind, 1999, quotes a previous large-scale sculpture project, Shuttlecocks, 1994, which is located on the Shuttlecock!Sphillx, 1996. Pencil and pastel on paper, 38 x 50 inches. Photo' See Spot Run, Inc., Toronto J\OTES l. Claes Oldenburg, "The Baroque Style of ~lr. Anonymous," in Claes Oldenburg, ed. Barbara Rose (New York: The Museum of Modern Att, 1970), 195.

2. Claes Oldenburg, "The World is Not a Drawing." in Claes Oldenburg, ed. Barbara Rose (~ew York: The Museum of Modem Art, 1970). 195.

3. Coosje van Bruggen. Claes Oldenburg: Drawings. 1959-1989,from tltc Collection of Claes Oldenburg and Coosje can Bru(!gen (Valencia: h·;un Centre Julio Gonzalez, 1989), 14.

4. Claes Oldenburg. "The World is Not a Drawing:· in Claes Oldenburg, ed. Barbara Hose (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1970). 195.

This exhibition is generously supported by David Teiger, Janie C. Lee and David B. ·warren, the Susan Vaughan Foundation, The Brown Foundation, Inc., Beth and Rick Schnieders, Mark Wawro and Melanie Gray, and the City of Houston.

Curated by Bernice Rose Chief Curator, Menil Drawing Institute and Study Center

Sunday, May 10, 2009 7:00p.m. Conversation: Claes Oldenburg and Bernice Rose

front: Propo~cd Sculpture i11 the J:Orrn of A.~paragus, for the Fireplace of Pacilio11 Fo11r, 1997. Pencil, colored pencil, and pastel on paper, 40Vs x 30V4 inches. Photo: Ellen Page Wilson. New York

All works: Collection Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen Courtesy the Oldenburg van Bmggen Foundation © Chtes Old<•nburg anJ Cnosje '"" Bruggen

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