Claes Oldenburg: The Sixties

Edited by Achim Hochdorfer with Barbara Schroder. Essays by Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Achim Hochdorfer, Branden W. Joseph, Gregor Stemmrich, and Ann Temkin, with an extensive chronology by Maartje Oldenberg. 

This monograph offers the most comprehensive overview to date of Claes Oldenburg's groundbreaking work from the 1960s—from the graffiti inspired representations of modern urban life in the Street installation and the expressionistically sculpted consumer goods of The Store to the colossal interpretations of everyday objects in public spaces. Oldenburg's sculptures present a living theater of objects that variously materialize as soft and limp, hard and formalistic, gigantic, and ghostly. No other modern artist has vivified—and reified—art to the same degree as Oldenburg. In a continual metamorphosis, the object-as-commodity becomes a symbol of the fantasies, desires, and obsessions that are inherent to our daily lives. With its collection of 385 souvenirs, kitsch objects, and studio models, Oldenburg's Mouse Museum, a walk-in miniature museum that found its final form in the 1970s, reveals a fascinating panorama of not only Oldenburg's artistic approaches but also the modern imagination. 

Developed in close collaboration with the artist and including previously unpublished materials, this richly illustrated volume offers insights into the artist's witty thought processes, while opening up new perspectives on the development of Pop art. 

Claes Oldenburg: The Sixties is published on the occasion of the exhibition organized by the Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien and touring to the Museum Ludwig, Cologne; the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.