Learning Specialist, Carolina Malagamba: This is a piece by artist Claes Oldenburg. Walk around it, look at it from all sides and angles. What do you think it might feel like?
One of the materials used to create this art piece is vinyl. Vinyl is a type of flexible plastic that can be molded and cut into different shapes.
Artist, Claes Oldenburg: And it was a fantastic material, so beautiful, so colorful, and also so adaptable to almost anything. And the vinyl in those days was, uh, thick and fresh, and it didn’t lose its color.
Carolina Malagamba: Oldenburg is known for creating large-scale sculptures of common objects. This one is a giant fan, but he also has pieces like a giant spoon, a giant apple, or one of my favorites, huge french fries.
Claes Oldenburg: My focus was on objects, and the one rule of my work is that it must not have any function because its true function is to become an artwork.
Carolina Malagamba: Oldenburg's process often involved sketching and making small models before going into this very large scale. And he would stuff these ginormous sculptures with foam or cardboard or air, which gives the sculpture this very droopy and flexible form.
Claes Oldenburg: It seemed perfectly natural to me that if you’re going to make sculpture out of real things around you, then why not try to make them soft so that you could push them around and they’ll change shape.
Carolina Malagamba: Usually, when we think of big sculpture, we think of big monuments that tell a story about something that happened in history. But he really is taking an everyday object, and it’s a very familiar object.
If you had to create something ginormous, what object and what material would you use to create that piece?