Collaborating for more than three decades, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen created monumental sculptures of everyday objects that transgress the established boundaries of sculpture. Some of the most iconic public artworks of the 20th century, such as Spoonbridge and Cherry (1988) and Shuttlecocks (1994), are products of their collaboration.
Read MoreThe duo met in 1970, when Claes Oldenburg's first major retrospective exhibition travelled to Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum. Oldenburg had by then built a reputation as a key player in the Pop Art movement, becoming renowned for his enlarged sculptures of everyday items including French Fries and Ketchup (1963) and Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks (1969). Coosje van Bruggen, an art historian then involved with the first wave of Dutch Conceptualism, was at the time an assistant curator at the Stedelijk nominated to help install Oldenburg's exhibition.
Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen first collaborated in 1976 to install Oldenburg's Trowel I (1971) at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, Netherlands. Van Bruggen suggested that Oldenburg change the colour of the oversized garden tool from silver to bright blue to reflect the colour associated with Dutch workman's overalls. This established a routine for their collaborative practice, in which the duo conceived artworks together while van Bruggen oversaw the colouring, execution, and siting of the work.
In 1984, the duo expanded their practice into performance with Il Corso del Coltello (The Course of the Knife). Conceived for the 41st Venice Biennale that year, it culminated in Knife Ship I (1985), a giant Swiss army knife that doubled as a fully functioning ship floating in the Venetian Arsenal. The project was also a product of a collaboration with art historian Germano Celant and architect Frank Gehry, and involved performers interacting with some of Oldenburg's enlarged objects.
The commonplace nature of Oldenburg and van Bruggen's exaggerated objects often attracted controversy for their placement in public, and often prestigious, spaces. Shuttlecocks, the monumental, feathered projectiles proposed for The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, in 1991, is one such example. However, the works were safely installed in 1994, initiating a broader definition of art and public sculpture. A soft version of the shuttlecock was later suspended in the rotunda of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, during Oldenburg's 1995 retrospective exhibition.
Oldenburg and van Bruggen married in 1977 and continued to collaborate until van Bruggen's death in 2009. In 2021, Pace Gallery New York organised Claes & Coosje: A Duet, which highlighted the 'poetic explorations of objecthood' central to their practice, as Tessa Moldan wrote for Ocula Magazine. Among the works on view was Dropped Bouquet (2021), a monumental garland of fallen flowers, which is the last sculptural work the duo worked on together.
Claes & Coosje: A Duet, Pace Gallery, New York (2021); Oldenburg and van Bruggen: The Typewriter Eraser, A Favored Form, Norton Museum of Art, Florida (2019); Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen: Things Around the House, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York (2015); Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen: Theater and Installation 1985–1990: II Corso del Coltello and The European Desktop, The Pace Gallery, New York (2012).
The Art of Collaboration, Venus Over Manhattan, New York (2018); American Masters 1940–1980, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (2018); The Long Run, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York (2017); Delirious: Art at the Limits of Reason, 1950–1980, Met Breuer, New York (2017); Sculpture on the Move 1947–2016, Kunstmuseum Basel (2016); America is Hard to See, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2015).
Sherry Paik | Ocula | 2021
