All that I care about is that, like any startling piece of nature, it should be capable of stimulating meaning. Mo. At first glance, the effect is not so much that you're looking at Brobdingnagian birdies, but that a tiny Beaux-Arts building has been rudely plopped in the middle of the badminton court, and that any moment a hand will remove the toy structure so the game can continue. The still-prolific Oldenburg has also managed to eroticize the most unlikely of subjects. What I see is not the thing itself, but myself in its form. Yes, Oldenburg was morphing before morphing was cool.
Enormous clothespins are funny, of course.
But Oldenburg has done more than give us a laugh. Here, the outstanding figure was Claes Oldenburg. And still is. All rights reserved.