Floor 3: Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen (exiting Landing)
Overview
Gallery Wayfinding
You are in the Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen Gallery. To your left is the gallery's title wall, which has various shades of light and dark blues and features large text that spells out the title ""Thinking Big."" Across from the title wall is a large photograph of Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen posing with one of their art pieces.
The gallery is brightly lit with 10-12 foot ceilings.
You’ve entered at the back of the square gallery in the left corner, facing the far, front wall. Around the walls are seven sculptures and a sculpture in the center.
This completes the content of the 3rd floor. To exit back to the 3rd Floor Landing with access to the elevators and the content on the 4th floor, put your back to the Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen Gallery, and the elevators will be on your left.
Label
We are used to public sculptures representing larger-than-life gods, heroes, saints, and leaders. But what are we to make of representations of common objects—a clothespin, a flashlight, an ice cream cone, a box of matches—out of context, blown up to gigantic size, and inserted into a city square or park?
For more than three decades, Claes Oldenburg (born 1929, Stockholm, Sweden; died 2022, New York) and Coosje van Bruggen (born 1942, Groningen, Netherlands; died 2009, Los Angeles) made the everyday unfamiliar through unexpected transformations.
Between 1976 and 2009, the husband-and-wife team created more than forty Large-Scale Projects in cities around the world. In each case, they carefully selected their subject and adapted it to the site, responding to the location’s physical conditions and symbolic associations. The pair developed their ideas in close collaboration, using drawings, models, and written notes, and partnered with skilled fabricators, structural engineers, and many others to translate their visions into reality. Playful and—despite their inanimate subject matter—profoundly human, Oldenburg and van Bruggen’s works collapse the boundary between public and private and radically reinvent the tradition of the monument.
This gallery features several of Oldenburg and van Bruggen’s models for the Large-Scale Projects, which the artists considered stand-alone artworks rather than mere studies. It also includes a selection of indoor sculptures that likewise transform overlooked items from our ordinary surroundings.
Label
"At first, the monuments were playful, personal fantasies; then the monuments seemed to become more real and public."
—Claes Oldenburg, 1969
In the early 1960s, Oldenburg began creating oversize sculptures of hamburgers, light switches, and other everyday objects. He soon pushed the idea further with his Proposed Colossal Monuments (1965–69)—fantastical renderings of imaginary public art projects inspired by his travels in Europe and the United States, along with the cavernous space of his new loft studio. At once humorous and ambitious, these drawings and collages explore what it means to enlarge the familiar to impossible levels. In 1976, Oldenburg's first urban commission, Clothespin, was installed in Philadelphia. That same year, while working in the Netherlands, he began his partnership with the Dutch curator and art historian Coosje van Bruggen.
Oldenburg's preferred subjects of the late 1960s and early 1970s, such as the Geometric Mouse and typewriter eraser, anticipated the Large-Scale Projects the duo would later pursue worldwide.
Label
"I am for the art of rust and mold. . . . I am for the art of things lost and thrown away, coming home from school."
—Claes Oldenburg, from I am for an Art (1961)
Visitors to the Museum Haus Esters in Krefeld, Germany, in 1987 encountered a strange sight: giant versions of discarded household objects—a broken bottle, half an automobile tire, an uprooted birdhouse—strewn throughout the galleries. Windows and floors bore comic-book-style representations of broken glass, suggesting that the unwanted items had been hurled violently into the museum. The exhibition, Haunted House, was part of a series of indoor installations and gallery-size sculptures that Oldenburg and van Bruggen made beginning in the late 1980s. In many of these works, they spotlighted items that were, in Oldenburg's description, "eaten, discarded, worn away, broken."
In the early 1990s, the artists created several variations of a partially consumed, rotting apple core—also an object in Haunted House—including the nearly eight-foot-tall example on view in this gallery.
Label
This exhibition was designed to welcome the widest possible audience, and this screen-reader friendly website was built specifically with our low-vision and blind visitors in mind. Please enjoy the following features to help you navigate and engage with the exhibition:
- Each floor has a welcome panel that contains a Braille introduction and tactile map of the floor.
- All videos have open captions.
- Throughout the exhibition spaces, there are tactile floor strips that extend perpendicular from the wall, between galleries and at specific touch points. When you encounter a floor strip, that means there is a tactile QR code on the wall within arm’s length. Scanning this QR code on your personal device takes you to a screen reader friendly website that contains all exhibition text, visual descriptions for all artworks and galleries, guided tactile descriptions for touch objects accompanying select artworks, guided tactile descriptions for tactile maps located to the right of each introductory panel, and transcripts for all videos.
Helpful Links:
- Are you curious about what this website is and other accessibility considerations we've built into this reinstallation? Check out this FAQ to learn more.
- Certain galleries and artwork might have audio stops associated with them, which will be indicated by a 3-digit audio callout number on the wall. You can navigate to our Audio Guide Search, also located at the top of this navigation bar, to look up the stop number and listen on your personal device.
Objects
8 objects in the order you'll encounter them from this entrance. Select an object to view details.
Artwork 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 stylized sculpture depicts an upright, open matchbook—which is about three feet high—and a group of detached, bent, and crumpled matches scattered nearby, which are roughly the size of boomerangs. The various parts are rendered as clean, planar geometric forms in painted steel and foam and sit on a low, white, rectangular platform.
At the back right is the largest component, representing a matchbook that sits upright, with its front cover peeled all the way back and tucked behind it. A black strike strip juts upward at a slight angle at the front; behind this, five matches rise up. They have vivid yellow bodies, and their heads are variously red or black. Two of the matches bend forward at sharp angles; two others bend backward, and one, at the far left, stands upright with only a slight bend at its center. The black match head of the standing match is surrounded by a curving bright blue plane that suggests a flame.
In front of the matchbook, five other matches lie horizontally on the platform in a variety of positions, each of them bent into zigzags and right angles. Like the matches in the book, they have flat yellow stick bodies. Three of them have red heads; the other two are blackened, with the black portion extending beyond the matchhead to include much of the rest of the stick. Several small, thin, black silhouettes of human figures stand vertically on the white base between the scattered matches, providing a sense of the scale intended for the final sculpture for which this model is a study.
This piece serves as a model for a much larger sculpture. Behind this piece, for educational context, a large, blow-up photograph on the wall shows the much larger final version of the artwork as it is permanently installed in Barcelona. 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.
Artwork 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
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 steel, canvas, and resin sculpture depicts a spiral notebook torn in half at the middle but still joined at the spine, its cover and pages separated as if it was opened and then suspended in midair. The sculpture, which is about the size of a standard notebook but with a much wider spiral spine, rises from a square gray metal base plate.
Four thick, matte black metal-like planes form the main body: two larger lower panels lean together diagonally, while two upper panels flare outward and upward with softly wavy edges, creating a V-shaped opening 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 spiral anchored by a row of evenly spaced round rivets along the edge of the black panels. The spiral does not actually go through the rivets, and it is open at either end. Along the lower edges, the black surface reveals a rough, pale, crusted underlayer with flecks of paint**.** The base plate has light etching-like markings in a spiral pattern, as well as the artist's initials (CO) inscribed in marker at one corner.
This piece serves as a model for a much larger sculpture. Behind this piece, for educational context, a large, blow-up photograph on the wall shows the much larger final version as it is installed at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln. The 22-foot-tall sculpture rises from a mound of mulch set within a grassy plaza. Small trees stand in the background, and behind the trees, there is a tall, brick building. The exposed pages in the final sculpture feature cutout text in cursive handwriting, but the words are difficult to discern in the photo.
Artwork 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 five feet tall—about the height of a short adult—represents a formal shirt collar and necktie that are turned upside down. Made from canvas, steel, polyurethane, and resin, the collar serves as the base as the necktie rises up vertically in a dynamic, twisting, snake-like form.
The white collar sits atop a dark gray-painted rectangular block that in turn rests on the corner of a larger, thin rectangular platform. The front of the collar extends out from the corner of the smaller block, and the knot of the tie is suspended in the air in front of it. The long part of the tie continues to pitch forward and extends upward in a single continuous sweep. The ribbon-like form twists as it rises, creating sharp creases that mimic stiff fabric. The tie's surface is predominantly white with a pattern of broad, diagonal gray bands that follow the curves and folds of the material. At the top, the front and back ends of the tie separate and jut in opposite directions. As the wider front curls forward, the fabric on its exposed backside flares open to reveal a vivid, turquoise-green interior that contrasts with the muted exterior.
This piece serves as a model for a much larger sculpture. Behind this piece, for educational context, a large, blow-up photograph on the wall shows the much larger final version as it is installed in Frankfurt, Germany. 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.
Artwork 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 large sculpture made of foam, resin, and paint represents an oversized birdhouse with a long post that rests on the floor, face up. The birdhouse itself—which is about the size of a large shipping box—consists of a large, rectangular gray block topped with two panels that connect to form a triangular roof. The structure has a mottled, concrete-like surface and rough edges, accented by blue bands running along the near and far sides. On its facade, which is facing up toward the ceiling, there is a small circular hole; the interior is dark and nothing can be seen inside.
The post, which is about as long and thick as a small log, emerges from the bottom center of the house, painted a similar gray with speckled wear-like markings. At its end, the post transitions into a slightly wider, darker, heavily textured brown section resembling dirt or soil, suggesting the part of the post that was previously planted in the ground. The object is presented directly on the object floor near a glass wall that looks out on the sculpture terrace. A low museum stanchion has been placed on the floor around it.
Artwork 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
Rising about five feet tall and spanning about ten feet in length—as high as a short adult and slightly shorter than a compact car—this sculpture is a stylized representation of a greatly enlarged bow and arrow that are aimed downward into, and partly buried in, the ground. The bowstring is pulled back and held taut by an arrow, as if the arrow is about to be released. Only the back of the arrow shaft and the two ends of the bow are visible.
Starting from the bottom, the base of the sculpture consists of a long, shallow white tray, filled with a pebbly, gray-green material that suggests natural turf. The sculpture is arranged along the tray's long axis.
Rising from the base are three main elements. To our left, a tall, yellow-beige arc curves upward and forward (the front part of the bow); to our right, a smaller yellow-beige arc echoes the left form at a lower height, emerging and dipping back toward the ground. Both parts of the bow are modeled in a series of faceted planes that have different degrees of light and shadow. Between them, closer to the front part of the bow, a slender, silver cylindrical post emerges from the base at a nearly forty-five degree angle, rising at a diagonal from left to right . At its top is a vivid red, feather-like fin made of four symmetrical, serrated lobes pressed together along a central seam. This is the fletching of the arrow.
Two taut, black cables connect the top of the arrow to each end of the bow. One cable runs diagonally leftward to the higher arc, and the other diagonally rightward to the smaller arc, forming a triangular, tensioned structure. The entire form of the bow and arrow is tilted slightly backward.
This piece serves as a model for a much larger sculpture. Behind this piece, for educational context, a large, blow-up photograph on the wall shows the much larger public sculpture that this model is related to, as it is permanently installed along the Embarcadero 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.
Related Media
Artwork Label Text
Oldenburg explains: why make giant versions of everyday things?
Transcript
NARRATOR:
Some artists like big ideas. You could say Claes Oldenburg took _big _pretty literally here. He’s made dozens of sculptures like this, blowing up all kinds of common, everyday objects to impossible sizes. 50 foot tall clothespins. Giant tubes of lipstick. Binoculars the size of a house.
Here’s another thing some artists like: manifestos. Oldenburg famously wrote one, back in 1961. We only have it in writing, but let’s imagine it sounds something like this:
SFX: Sounds of a crowd, and applause, as if he has arrived on stage and is giving a speech in front of a stadium full of believers —
OLDENBURG (VOICE ACTOR READING QUOTES):
I am for the art that a kid licks, after peeling away the wrapper.
I am for an art that flaps like a flag, or helps blow noses, like a handkerchief.
I am for an art that is eaten, like a piece of pie…
NARRATOR:
And why not? Everyday objects are recognizable, relatable. But in Oldenburg’s hands, they become…not so familiar. The simple change in scale makes them absurd.
OLDENBURG:
I am for the art of underwear and the art of taxicabs.
I am for the art of ice cream cones dropped on concrete.
I am for an art that takes its form from the lines of life, that twists and extends impossibly and accumulates and spits and drips, and is sweet and stupid as life itself.
SFX: Crowd cheers
Artwork 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 small, vertical sculpture—standing over two feet tall, or about as tall as a bedside table—combines rope, paper, foam, and paint to represent a typewriter eraser with its eraser wheel lying flat and its tail of brush bristles extending upward, defying gravity.
The object is anchored on a flat, square, gray base. The base is lightly scored with a grid of straight lines, like tiled paving. On the front right, the artist has signed and dated the work in pencil. Sitting on a base is a thick, round, pink foam disc (the eraser). Its edge is visibly porous and beaded. On top of the pink disk lies a paper element cut in an irregular, pale circular shape with softly undulating edges and subtle patina-like discoloration—a representation of the metal hub of the eraser wheel. A pencil line is drawn along the edge of the paper, following its contours. At the center of this shape is a pencil-drawn dark circle with a lighter circle around it. At the back side, the paper lifts and curls upward into a small, scooped flap.
Rising behind and partly over this paper-and-foam lower element 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.
Artwork 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
A small sculpture about two feet tall and wide consists of matte-black, flat, geometric metal plates that connect at hinged joints to form a stylized representation of the head of a mouse. A central square contains two smaller crisp square cutouts with flaps that can open in different directions. These represent the mouse's eyes. Hanging from points on each flap are thin metal chains that drop down to the base the sculpture sits on, where they trail into loose loops and end in small, flat circular discs. Attached to the upper side of the square plate are two large, flat circular plates representing the ears. Attached to the bottom edge is a long, rounded, paddle-like element that extends downward and could be read as the nose or a tail. The sculpture rests on three points: one of the large circular discs, one corner of the square plate, and the end of the curved element.
Artwork 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 eight-foot-tall sculpture—rising several feet higher than a tall human and almost as wide as their outstretched arms—depicts an eaten-away apple core standing vertically and slightly off-balance, its hourglass form flaring into two uneven, wavy-edged ends. Made from steel, polyurethane, and paint, the outer "skin" is a deep burgundy-red with a leathery, wrinkled-looking 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 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. It is displayed on a low, circular, white museum plinth.