Floor 3: Oldenburg Van Bruggen: North entrance
Overview
Interpretive Text
Objects
8 objects in the order you'll encounter them from this entrance. Select an object to view details.
Label Text
1991
Latex paint, polyurethane, and steel
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1997
Visual Description
A roughly 8 foot tall sculpture depicts an eaten-away apple core standing vertically, its hourglass form flaring into two uneven, wavy-edged ends, and it is displayed on a low, circular white plinth. The outer “skin” is a deep burgundy-red with a leathery, wrinkled surface that folds and puckers around the edges like thick fabric or dried fruit peel. Inside, the exposed core is a warm cream color mottled with pale tan and faint yellowing stains, with pronounced vertical ridges and channels running from top to bottom, suggesting fibrous fruit flesh carved away. A short, slightly curved stem rises from the top, angled diagonally upward. The bottom end spreads outward into a thicker ring of red skin, creating a stable base; the interior cavity opens broadly between the two ends, emphasizing the hollowed, eaten-away center.
Label Text
1987
Expanded polystyrene, polyurethane resin, and latex paint
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1990
Visual Description
A roughly 7 foot long sculpture shaped like an oversized birdhouse isresting on its side, its long handle extending to the right. The head is a large, rectangular gray block with a mottled, concrete-like surface and crisp edges, accented by two vertical blue bands running along the near and far sides. At the top of the head, a small circular hole is set into a slightly recessed, slanted surface. The handle emerges from the center of the head and tapers slightly, painted a similar gray with speckled wear-like markings. At the far right end, the handle transitions into a darker, heavily textured brown section resembling rusted metal.
Label Text
2003
Polyester resin, aluminum, cast epoxy painted with gel coat, and pigmented sand
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection
Acquired by the Fisher family, 2003
A bowstring is held taut by an arrow. But instead of pointing upward into the air, it is about to be released into the ground. This intriguing sculpture was commissioned in the late 1990s by Gap founders Donald and Doris Fisher for a small park along San Francisco’s Embarcadero that was being developed in conjunction with the Gap’s new headquarters. The curved bow and string echo the forms of the nearby Bay Bridge and recall the Greek god of love referenced in the title. The overall shape and angled position also mimic a sailboat on the water.
Countless songs and stories celebrate San Francisco as the realm of Love. It therefore seems fitting to embed the arrow of Cupid in its ground.
—Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, from the artists’ statement on Cupid’s Span,2002
Visual Description
Spanning about 120 inches (roughly ten feet) in length, this sculpture shows a bow with bowstring held taut by an arrow, as if it is about to be released but also disappearing into the ground. Starting from the bottom with a shallow white tray, the base of the sculpture is framing a dense field of what appears to be a dark green turf, with the sculpture arranged along the tray’s long axis.
Rising from the base are three main elements: to the left, a tall tan arc curves upward and forward like a smooth wave or bent beam, its thick, rounded profile; to the right, a smaller tan arc echoes the left form at a lower height, emerging and dipping back toward the ground. Near the center stands a slender, silver vertical post, slightly angled, functioning as a mast. At its top sits a vivid red, feather-like fin made of four symmetrical, serrated lobes pressed together along a central seam, giving it the look of a stylized plume at the other end of an arrow.
Two taut, black cables connect the top region of the red fin to the ends of the tan arcs—one cable running diagonally leftward to the higher arc and the other diagonally rightward to the smaller arc—forming a triangular, tensioned structure.
A large photograph on the wall behind the sculpture shows the completed, much larger version installed in San Francisco. In the image, the 70-foot sculpture rises above people scattered across a circular grassy plaza bordered by a concrete path. This lawn sits beside the San Francisco Bay, with the Bay Bridge extending into the distance behind the towering form.
Label Text
1971
Expanded polystyrene foam, paper, rope, and paint
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1988
A once-common tool made obsolete by the introduction of correcting tape and, later, computers, the typewriter eraser was another theme Oldenburg explored in multiple mediums and sizes from the late 1960s on. With its soft rubber wheel and nylon brush (used to clear away eraser crumbs), the object could evoke the human figure, a jellyfish, or even a whirling tornado. Oldenburg played with different orientations of the form. Here, the eraser head lies sprawled on the ground and the bristles stand upright, as though the object has just fallen from some height.
Visual Description
A vertical sculpture, standing about 2.5 feet tall, combines expanded polystyrene foam, paper, rope, and paint and is anchored on a flat, square gray base. The base is lightly scored with a grid of straight lines, like tiled paving. Sitting on the base is a thick, round, pink foam disk. Its edge is visibly porous and beaded.
On top of the pink disk lies an irregular, pale circular shape with softly undulating edges and subtle patina-like discoloration. Near its center is a dark circular spot or cutout-like mark, creating a bullseye effect against the pale surface. At one side, the paper lifts and curls upward into a small, scooped flap, giving the sheet a three-dimensional, peeled-back look.
Rising beside and partly over this paper-and-foam platform is a vertical bundle of many brown rope lengths, hanging and stretching upward in loose, uneven lines. The ropes are gathered between two small, rectangular plates: a lower gray plate close to the base and an upper brown plate at the top. Both plates appear painted and punctured with bolts, screws, or nail-like fasteners; the top plate is slightly tilted, and the ropes drape between the plates like a dense curtain of cords. At the lower junction, additional dark fasteners and short protruding elements cluster around the plate.
Label Text
1971
Aluminum and paint, steel pins, and chain
Published by Gemini G.E.L., ed. 21/120
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1979
Combining a cartoon mouse with the schematic form of an early movie camera, the Geometric Mouse served as a personal logo and alter ego for Oldenburg in the late 1960s and early 1970s, appearing on banners, letterhead, and even architecture, in the plan for his “Mouse Museum.” As a sculpture, it became a vehicle for playing with scale: Oldenburg produced five different sizes of the Geometric Mouse, dubbed Scales X, A, B, C, and D, with the diameter of the ear ranging anywhere from six inches to nine feet.
Visual Description
An abstract two foot tall sculpture combines matte-black geometric plates. A large black circle sits toward the upper center, attached by a small hinge to a rotated square (diamond-shaped) plate beneath it. To the lower left, a second black circle connects to the diamond by another visible hinge. The central diamond panel includes two crisp cutouts: a small diamond-shaped opening near the lower center and, to the upper right, a triangular opening that reads as a sharp white wedge against the black surface. From the right side of the diamond, a long, rounded, paddle-like black element extends diagonally down and right. Thin metal chains hang from points on the diamond panel, dropping to the base where they trail into loose loops and end in small, flat, oval discs.
Label Text
1987
Steel, expanded polyurethane epoxy, wood, latex paint, and adhesive tape
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1997
For the 1992 Summer Olympics, Oldenburg and van Bruggen developed a project for a newly developed residential district in Barcelona that took the form of an open book of matches with a single match aflame, surrounded by five scattered matches on the ground. The red and yellow colors refer to the flag of Catalonia, the autonomous region of Spain in which the city is located, while the crumpled and burnt matches evoke the violence of the Spanish Civil War (1936‒39). To make the final work, this steel presentation model was scaled up to twenty times its size at factories in Barcelona.
The Lance has never blunted the pen, nor the pen the lance”—
Don Quixote of La Mancha
Passion boiling underneath a cool surface
Don’t play with fire!
A matchcover crumpled in a pocket
A torn out or extinguished match
Two matches stuck together
“the small levels of phosphor”—Federico García Lorca—Coosje van Bruggen, excerpt from inscription on a 1987 drawing by Claes Oldenburg entitled Stirring Up Spanish Themes
Visual Description
A large sculptural arrangement of painted geometric parts sits on a white base, featuring a main clustered structure at the far right and several separated components spread across the foreground. The dominant elements are long, flat, angular strips painted yellow, bent into zigzags and right angles~~.~~ At the upper right, multiple yellow strips converge into a compact, standing construction that rises from a low, sloped wedge base; the wedge is cream-colored with a black rectangular panel on its front face, suggesting a matchbook that's been folded back. From this base, three or more yellow arms angle upward and outward, each tipped with rounded, capsule-like ends painted red or black. A taller vertical yellow post rises near the back of the cluster, capped with a black segment and topped by a large, flat blue shape resembling a flame.
Across the lower half of the composition, detached yellow strip-forms lie scattered: to the left, a loose ring-like arrangement of bent yellow bands interspersed with red and black rounded ends~~;~~ at center and right, two more separated pieces extend diagonally, each with a red rounded end and yellow folded tail, while a longer curved black piece with a yellow connector lies at the far right edge. Several small, thin black upright pins shaped like human figures stand vertically from the white base between the scattered parts, creating a field of short markers around the disassembled-looking elements.
Behind the piece, a large wall photograph shows the final version of the artwork at full scale. The tall yellow posts resembling oversized matchsticks rise 72 feet from the sidewalk beside a street. They tower over a white van that passes by, as well as a group of three adults walking along the sidewalk. Behind the yellow posts, several trees extend upward, their branches reaching only halfway to the tallest part of the sculpture. In the distance, there is a ten-story apartment building.
Label Text
1996
Steel, canvas, latex paint, and resin
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1997
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For a commission for the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, the artists chose a subject close at hand: one of the spiral notebooks that Oldenburg routinely filled with sketches and ideas for artworks. In the final sculpture, the notebook is ripped in half, echoing the artist’s practice of taking apart his completed journals. The giant aluminum pages alternate between Oldenburg’s and Van Bruggen’s distinct observations from their initial journey to Nebraska. The sculpture gives visual form to their collaborative process, which they often described as a “unity of opposites.”
At a certain point, after trying several subjects—from a cup of coffee spilling and a doughnut rolling to a roller skate on end, among others—we decided to make our gathering of notes itself the subject, which seemed to fit a university site.
—Claes Oldenburg
Visual Description
A small abstract sculpture around one foot tall resembles a upright notebook torn in half at the middle but still joined at the spine. The sculpture rises from a square gray metal base plate. Four thick, matte black metal-like planes form the main body: two larger lower panel leans together diagonally, while two upper panel flares outward and upward with softly wavy edges, creating a V-shaped, open “mouth” at the top. In between the two v-shaped openings, each has a cluster of stiff, triangular, jagged “pages”—off-white and mottled with colored specks of paint. Between these panels runs a vertical silver coil spring zigzagging in a spring-like waveform, anchored by a row of evenly spaced round rivets along the edge of the black panels. The spiral does not actually go throughAlong the lower edges, the black surface reveals a rough, pale, crusted underlayer with flecks of paint, while the base plate shows faint scuffs and light markings near the corners.
A large photograph on the wall behind the sculpture shows the much larger final version. The sculpture rises from a mound of mulch set within a grassy plaza. Small trees stand in the background, and at 22 feet tall, the sculpture appears to tower above them. Behind the trees, there is a tall, brick building.
Label Text
1993
Canvas, steel, polyurethane, resin, and latex paint on painted wood base
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Acquired by the Fisher family, 1997
In its scale and placement, the "Inverted Collar and Tie" takes on the format of the larger-than-life equestrian statue, but instead of being hierarchical, it is upside down and soft and the ends of the tie mimic the skyscraper behind it, modifying the building’s image of power.
—Coosje van Bruggen
In 1993, DG Bank commissioned Oldenburg and van Bruggen to create a sculpture for its new skyscraper in Frankfurt, Europe’s financial hub. The artists selected a piece of white-collar attire—a collar and tie. The erect vertical form echoes the building, but it is turned upside-down and appears to creep off its base in what van Bruggen called an “anti-monumental gesture.” To capture the form’s softness and complexity, the pair abandoned traditional metal casting methods and turned to fiberglass-reinforced plastics. Bay Area specialists Kreysler & Associates used 3D laser scanning to enlarge the artists’ model and translate it into a strong, lightweight material.
Visual Description
A freestanding sculpture about 5 feet tall stands on a large, flat, pale gray rectangular platform with a smaller, darker gray rectangular block set on top toward the right. Rising from this small raised block is an irregular, snake-like form that resembles a necktie, tied in a loop at the bottom.
From the loop's left side, a long, narrow, ribbonlike column appears to unfurl upward in a single continuous sweep. The strip twists as it rises, creating sharp creases that mimics stiff fabric. Its surface is predominantly white with broad, diagonal gray bands spiraling around it like a barber-pole pattern. At the top, the ribbon flares into a loose, open, collar-like fold with edges that curl outward; inside this upper fold, a vivid turquoise-green area is visible, contrasting with the muted exterior.
A large photograph on the wall behind the sculpture shows the much larger final version. In the image, the 39-foot tall sculpture towers over two adults with bicycles who stand in a spare concrete plaza, looking up at it. Behind them, a road runs past a row of gray ten-story office buildings, with the words "Lloyd Versicherungen" visible across the facade of the nearest building.