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Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen -- The Partnership
"That is what I want to give to people. A humane sign in the mostly inhumane urban landscape."
-- Coosje van Bruggen
Getting started...
"By June '93, I believe that was June '93, we had formulated the concept
of the sculpture, which was to be the notebook - torn. The idea would be
that we would go to the site, just like we would with all of the sculptures,
and we would record our impressions."
"Normally Coosje doesn't use this notebook but she would use a blue notebook,
which is a little bit larger. And she did record in her notebook and I
recorded in mine. "
"And then we would combine these into this one notebook -- this one was
chosen -- and we would put her notes on one page and mine on the other.
Then they would alternate and also reverse so that when you were reading
mine in one direction, you would be reading hers in the other direction."
"So that made for an interplay between the words, and also the idea that
they would be perforated so that the light would shine through them and
you would get an intermingling of the scripts. The light shining through
Coosje's script would then intermingle with my script and visa versa."
-- Claes Oldenburg
Approaching
art...
"Claes and I have a different approach to this specific notebook. He tends
to be very physical and so what he discovers in his surroundings is quite
different from what I discover. He will discover objects which he then
can weigh and then decide he wants to turn it into a sculpture." "I read
Cather, Willa Cather, and that was one of the first things that made me
feel very clearly that it was a good idea to have the words as laser cuts
so that the light could play with it. Willa Cather writes a lot about
the plains and the unyielding winds and the earth not giving to the people.
And the people are always inside huddled together in these huts on winter
evenings, and it's the contrast between shadow and light and the reflection
of the light that I thought was very appropriate." -- Coosje van Bruggen
Textual sources...
"It is a very insignificant, overlooked little sign in the form of a motherland
cookie or in the form of a roller skate or in the form of a falcon, you
just see while driving by, that all of a sudden can give you an association
which is quite profound. It is very often the unimportant things that
create the connections. And that is very much the part of this piece."
-- Coosje van Bruggen
"The
hardest thing in metal sculpture is of course to get the sense of lightness
and flight and to counteract gravity, and that's what we've been aiming
for."
-- Claes Oldenburg
The spiral...
"When the notebook is torn like this it's got two halves and they're joined
by the spiral, and this is in a way a kind of a symbol of the collaboration.
This is Coosje and this is me and we are joined by the spiral. Of course
the spiral can be twisted and so on, and you can make, once you get it
into this shape, you can really start to make a sculpture out of it and
you can change it into all kinds of different forms. So this was the starting
point." -- Claes Oldenburg
How do you
define public art?
"I don't believe the word 'public art' is correct. It is private art in
a public place. We are not pretending that we are only dealing with the
taste of a community or the different taste of the community. We are in
the first place, ourselves, and we have a development, our own development,
which is very private and very intimate and it is up against completely
different elements than we find within a community. And we have to position
ourselves in terms of our own aesthetic values." -- Claes Oldenburg
Coosje's handwriting...
"From the very first time that Coosja and I met, I was very much attracted
by her handwriting. And I thought that some day that I would love to make
this handwriting part of the work." -- Claes Oldenburg
What would
you like people to bring away from it?
"The feeling of liberty. The feeling of freedom. The feeling of, it doesn't
matter, let's try. Knowledge is good to get. The sculpture has a levitating
affect. It has an effect that it is about to take off and has an effect
of freedom, and I think that is also suggests a kind of harmony with nature."
-- Claes Oldenburg
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