You can take an object and simply put anything you want in that object, and I accessed that partly through Freudian ideas. Claes Oldenburg More Quotes by Claes Oldenburg More Quotes From Claes Oldenburg I started to draw buildings. I called them Proposed Colossal Monuments - they weren't for real, not for actual building. It was more a critique of architecture. Claes Oldenburg building architecture real I was always interested in drawing. As a child, I started my own country, which was called Neubern. It was located in the South Atlantic. I did the documentation of Neubern in great detail. I drew everything that was there, all the houses and all the cars and all the people. We even had a navy and an air force. I spent a lot of time drawing. Claes Oldenburg air country children In 1958 I finally found a large enough apartment on the Lower East Side, where I reverted to figure painting. I drew and painted quite a lot of figures and nudes. People would come and pose for me. Claes Oldenburg east sides people I am an immigrant in a sense. What happened was that my father was stationed in New York when my mother became pregnant, and she said, "I've got to go to Sweden so this child can be born there, because you don't have any idea where you're going to be transferred next." Claes Oldenburg new-york mother children The art world was very small and the people got together at parties. There was less commercialism. Claes Oldenburg together people art I was very happy to be living in New York at that time, more than in the present time. Now it's all commerce. Claes Oldenburg commerce very-happy new-york Andy [Warhol] was on the scene, but he wasn't an artist at first; he was more an illustrator. He was always surrounded by about ten people who worshipped him. He'd go to a party and they would all come along. But he was drawing shoes and that sort of thing. Claes Oldenburg shoes party artist My work doesn't have the same rules as, say, Andy [Warhol]'s work. But it's gathered together for the simple reason that we all worked with the images and objects around us. Claes Oldenburg simple reason together Ox-Bow was a very free place, very open. You could do whatever you wanted to do. Claes Oldenburg bows wanted I'm always careful to say that I changed everything I found. Claes Oldenburg careful changed found I had no idea what art was. There was one art class in high school, but it didn't make a big impression on me. Then I went to college and thought I'd become a writer. Claes Oldenburg college art school I got a job as a dishwasher in Oakland, and I would draw all day. It was nice because the lady who ran the boardinghouse where I worked let me live there for nothing if I gave her some drawings every week - mostly park drawings of birds and such. Claes Oldenburg oakland nice jobs Duchamp is known for calling a thing art, rather than making it. A lot of that is picked up in pop art, too. Claes Oldenburg pops calling art My mother warned me to avoid things colored red. Claes Oldenburg red mother A life cycle can be imposed on an object. An object can be very energetic and active, and then it has a dying phase and a phase of decomposition. Claes Oldenburg cycle active dying life If you really want to be an artist, you search yourself, and you find a lot of it comes from earlier times. I have pretty much built the work around my experiences. When I've moved from one place to another, the work has changed. Claes Oldenburg yourself place you work My single-minded aim is to give existence to fantasy. Claes Oldenburg give aim fantasy existence My struggle has been to return painting to the tangible object, which is like returning the personality to touching and feeling the world around it, to offset the tendency to vagueness and abstraction. To remind people of practical activity, to suggest the sense and not to escape from the senses. Claes Oldenburg painting personality struggle people I think of a monument as being symbolic and for the people and therefore rhetorical, not honest, not personal. Claes Oldenburg personal being think people 'Clothespin' was the first city monument on a large scale that could compete with the architecture around it. Claes Oldenburg compete city first architecture
