arrowhead is buried, so we cannot know if it is lead or gold, if love is denied or returned. But this is San Francisco, so we can assume that digging would reveal gold. Other works by the artists include the 18-foot Lion’s Tail (1999), hung out of a gallery window in Venice; the 59-foot Ago, Filo, e Nodo (Needle, Thread, and Knot, 2000) in Milan, and Dropped Cone (2001, 39 feet 10 inches × 19 feet) in Cologne, Germany. Van Bruggen placed her 70-foot-high Spring in Seoul, South Korea, in 2006. The 51-foot Paint Torch (2011), dripping a creamy blob of orange pigment at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, was installed after Coosje’s death in 2009.
Figure 18 Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Cupid’s Span, 2002, stainless steel, structural carbon steel, fiber-reinforced plastic, cast epoxy, and polyvinyl chloride foam, painted with polyester gelcoat, 64 ft. × 143 ft. 9 in. × 17 ft. 3/8 in. Rincon Park, San Francisco, California. Photo by Attilio Maranzano. Courtesy of the Oldenburg van Bruggen Studio
Oldenburg and van Bruggen’s forms bring to light new aspects of the world’s content. They do not so much mirror nature—which in their case is the nature of technology and urban culture—as offer a unique apprehension of the world. The sculptors enhance seeing with artistic vision, trusting their intuition to awaken us beyond ourselves. They choose and reduce forms to crystallize visibility. Crystallographers who characterize crystalline molecular compounds perform in their analyses a series of what are called symmetry operations through various axes. Those compounds which have the fewest symmetry operations are the least complicated crystals because the structure repeats itself through different operations. Oldenburg and van Bruggen often choose objects of the highest symmetry, such as a baseball bat, pickaxe, flashlight, clothespin, hand stamp, with a garden hose, bicycle, or dropped bowl introducing complications to the symmetry of the objects.
With their decision in 1977 to dedicate themselves to public sculpture, Oldenburg and van Bruggen turned the city into a gallery where there is always free and open access to the artworks without hourly restrictions or a limited run. Furthermore, their choice of subjects and placements freed sculpture from architectural manipulation and political servitude, which is to say from ideological polemics. The insinuation of art into urbanism was not just an afterthought or meant to fill a gap or create a vista. Their sculptures were intended as an art of the people or the individual rather than one of ideology. They made the diurnal realm in which society functions the subject of their art, and enhanced urban space by freeing the city from the tyranny of its history.
The sculptors explored their imaginative forms through models and drawings to yield new possibilities. Once problems were solved, their works revealed an inner logic and imparted a sense of authority and power that they never surrendered. The incongruous associations and disjunctive overlaps in the sketches resolved themselves into simplified forms in the large sculptures. Oldenburg and van Bruggen developed a collaborative style that gave legitimacy and authenticity to their public works.
Figure 19 Claes Oldenburg, Proposed Monument for Mill Rock, East River, New York: Slice of Strawberry Cheesecake, 1992, soft-ground etching and aquatint, 25 × 29-1/2 in. (63.5 × 75 cm). Edition of sixty, 10 AP, BAT, BN, HC, 2 PP, TP, © 1992 Claes Oldenburg. Photo by Ellen Page Wilson.
Oldenburg had played with various concepts for monumental projects over the years, many never executed and some not feasible, but these he recorded in drawings and prints, such as his Proposed Monument for Mill Rock, East River, New York: Slice of Strawberry Cheesecake (1992) (fig. 19). But there were also some feasible projects that faced rejection.
4
REJECTION AND RECUPERATION
Free Stamp was not the sculptors’ first experience with rejection, although they often resolved the incidents in a satisfying fashion. Oldenburg’s Typewriter Eraser (1976) in fallen form was refused by a corporate patron for a proposed specific site, but several revised versions were made, two of which can be found in the Nasher Sculpture Garden in Dallas and the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. (fig. 20). The sculptors’ Cross Section of a Toothbrush with Paste, in a Cup, on a Sink: Portrait of Coosje’s Thinking, in Krefeld, Germany, since 1983, was originally intended for placement on the University of Hartford campus on a path between student dormitories and classroom buildings.1 The Board of Regents rejected it by a 3–2 vote in March 1982 in spite of its being recommended by the university president, who had the support of the dean of the Hartford Art School, the director of the Wadsworth Atheneum, and the head of the Yale University Art Gallery. Although the sculptors had installed Spitzhacke (Pickaxe) in Krefeld, Germany, in 1982 and Gartenschlauch (Garden Hose) the following year, this was also a period of some disappointment for them that saw another rejection.
Grants totaling $190,000 had been arranged to fund a sculpture for the well-known ski resort in Vail, Colorado. Oldenburg and van Bruggen designed an elegant 60-foot fishing pole with a barrel-sized tin can at the end of the line. The village authorities objected, and the sculpture was abandoned.2 Of these works, however, the Cleveland commission was the most controversial and the lengthiest of the sculptors’ installations. While corporate executives, city fathers, and the Cleveland public wrangled over the merits of Free Stamp, the sculptors installed Spoonbridge and Cherry in Minneapolis, and Dropped Bowl with Scattered Slices and Peels and Bicyclette Ensevelie (Buried Bicycle) were nearing completion in Miami and Paris, respectively. Mistos (Match Cover) was also in process for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Chicago already had its 101-foot Batcolumn and Philadelphia its Clothespin. While Cleveland dithered, the sculptors were busy cementing their international reputation.
Figure 20 Claes Oldenburg, Typewriter Eraser, Scale X 2/4, 1999, stainless steel and molded fiber-reinforced plastic painted with acrylic polyurethane, 19 ft. 3 in. × 11 ft. 9-1/2 in. × 11 ft. 6-1/4 in. (5.87 × 3.59 × 3.51 m), edition of four. National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., gift of the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation. Courtesy of the Oldenburg van Bruggen Studio
The Cleveland project never achieved the notoriety of two other cases of sculptural controversy at this time, Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc, commissioned in 1979 by the Art in Architecture Program of the General Services Administration for a lower Manhattan plaza and rejected and dismantled ten years later, and Maya Lin’s design for a Vietnam memorial for the Mall in Washington, D.C.3 The Serra commission is relevant to Free Stamp as a rejected site-specific work. A public outcry defeated the project, and the 12 × 120–foot iron arc was dismantled and stored in a parking lot in Brooklyn. Serra’s graceful sculpture dissected the plaza of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building. While it did not seriously disrupt pedestrian traffic patterns, it did interrupt a clear view across the plaza, which Douglas Crimp has described as “a bleak, empty area” surrounded by “vulgarized International Style architecture.”4 Serra defined “site-specific” as conceived for a location, dependent upon it, and inseparable from it.5 Despite the power and elegance of many of his sculptures, it is difficult to defend the artist who had a predilection for filling any space allotted to him, with none ever seeming large enough. The art literature rarely touches on artistic arrogance, lack of foresight, or ecological damage in artistic installations. Crimp has noted that “Serra
