Claes Oldenburg Profile Airflow 1969

  • Not on view

When Oldenburg was a child, he played with a toy version of the 1937 Chrysler Airflow, the first car designed according to aerodynamic principles. Profile Airflow was inspired in part by that memory. The artist, known for his soft sculptures based on everyday objects, wanted it to be “clear in color, transparent like a swimming pool, but of a consistency like flesh.” He credits Kenneth Tyler, master printer and cofounder of the printmaking workshop Gemini G.E.L., for collaborating with industrial chemists over more than two years to develop a polyurethane material that was at once solid, flexible, and transparent.

Gallery label from 2021
Medium
Molded polyurethane relief over lithograph
Dimensions
composition (irreg.): 33 3/4 x 65 9/16 x 3 11/16" (85.7 x 166.5 x 9.3cm)
Publisher
Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles
Printer
Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles
Fabricator
of Polyurethane CalPolymers, Los Angeles
Edition
75
Credit
Gift of John and Kimiko Powers
Object number
360.1971
Copyright
© 2023 Claes Oldenburg
Department
Drawings and Prints

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