president of Cleveland’s City Council, was open for discussions and sharing of documents, such as minutes of meetings of City Council, and was a driving force in guiding appropriate legislation for acceptance by the City of the sculpture gift. I thank Martin Hauserman, archivist for Cleveland City Council, for his patient responses to my queries. I am grateful to Jane Tesso, art administration consultant of the BP America Corporate Collection, for access to information about the importance of art for Sohio and BP as reflected in in-house communications, and for background on her involvement with the eventual installation of Free Stamp. Legal files from BP have since been deposited in the archives of the Cleveland Historical Society. I am also thankful to Nick T. Giorgianni, director of property services for Sohio and BP America, for clarifying in-house attempts at BP to rescue the commission.
Leslie Cade and Peter Buettner provided access to memos and clipping files in the archive of the Cleveland Museum of Art. I am indebted to Betsy Lantz, head of the Ingalls Library, and her capable staff at the Cleveland Museum of Art for research support. Early drafts of the text were read by Carol Nathanson, Gabriel P. Weisberg, Holly Witchey, and John Garton, whose useful suggestions were greatly appreciated, as were those of an anonymous reader for Ohio University Press. I am indebted to the editorial and design staffs of the Press for the care and effort devoted to my text: Nancy Basmajian, Ricky Huard, and Beth Pratt.
Quotations of the sculptors in this text which are not cited are taken from the proceedings of the symposium “Spirit of the Monument,” April 11, 1992, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. An audio record on VHS tape is preserved in the Archives of American Art and in the Sculpture Center, Cleveland, Ohio. I would like to acknowledge Suzanne Ferguson, dean of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University, for recognizing both the significance of Free Stamp for the city of Cleveland and the importance of the symposium on the sculpture of Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, from which this text originated. Her full support of the program is greatly appreciated. I am also indebted to Coosje van Bruggen and Claes Oldenburg for several conversations about the project, and to Carey Ascenzo and Alexandra Lane of the Oldenburg van Bruggen Studio for assistance of every kind, but mostly technical, and for graciously providing images of sculptures and permissions to publish them in illustration of the text. In May 2014, Case Western Reserve University presented Mr. Oldenburg with an honorary degree, and the Intermuseum Conservation Association (ICA) began a conservation campaign to restore surface abrasion and interior metal oxidation; the procedures are recorded in a video documentary available from the ICA. Ann Albano, director of the Sculpture Center, initiated final arrangements for the conservation of Free Stamp with BP offices in Houston, Texas. I am indebted to Albert Albano and Mark Erdman of the ICA for background on the project.
Aspects of this study were presented in the following venues: “Oldenburg / van Bruggen and Free Stamp: Re:Installation and Iconology,” Cleveland Museum of Art, October 25, 2001; “Rejection and Acceptance: The Story of Free Stamp,” the Sculpture Center, January 31, 2002, Cleveland, Ohio; “Configuration and Iconology in Cleveland’s Free Stamp Sculpture,” Midwest Art History Society, 29th Annual Conference, April 19, 2002, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Photographic Credits: Richard Adler, 10; Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, 21; author, 22, 23, 25, 26–29, 31, 39, 42, 45, 60–62, 64, 68, 190; Barcroft Media, 24, 71, 72; Case Western Reserve University Archives, 9; Archive, Cleveland City Hall, 7; the Cleveland Museum of Art, 33; Cleveland Public Library, 46; Sidney Felsen, 14, back cover; National Gallery of Art, Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., 20; Joseph Karabinus, Cleveland, Ohio, 65; courtesy of the Oldenburg van Bruggen Studio, 1, 5, 8, 10–13, 15–19, 21, 34–39, 43, 49–61, 65; John Seyfried, 2–4, 41, 66, 67; Skissernas Museum, Archive of Public Art, Lund University, Sweden, 48; John Spence, 17; Bill Waterson, Chagrin Falls, Ohio, 73; Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio, 31, 42, 45; Ellen Page Wilson, New York, 19, 59.
Photographs: Richard Adler, 21; author, front cover, frontispiece, 6–8, 22–30, 32, 39, 40, 42, 44, 47, 71–73, page 190; D. James Dee, 55; Sidney B. Felson, 14, back cover; Karabinus Photography, 65–67; Emma Krantz, 48; Attilio Maranzano, 10–13, 15, 16, 18, 34–37, 43; Oldenburg van Bruggen Studio, 1, 5, 20, 21, 33, 38, 39, 43, 49, 50, 54, 56–58, 60, 61, 65; John Seyfried, Intermuseum Conservation Association, 2–4, 68–69, half title; Ellen Paige Wilson, 59; Dorothy Zeidman, 51.
INTRODUCTION
I tell you it is a great relief to have the opportunity to throw out the stamp and to have it land in such a beautiful place.
—Coosje van Bruggen1
I always feel that the end result . . . should be apt and all that, and it should set up a witty relation between large and small, but in the end it should also be something that is formally successful and has a certain beauty.
—Claes Oldenburg
Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen were commissioned to design a sculpture for a specific site in front of a new corporate headquarters for Sohio in downtown Cleveland (fig. 1). The contract of July 26, 1985, called for the sculptors’ design to integrate sculpture, plaza, and building on Public Square as a cohesive unit. The original rubber stamp project never materialized. After several years’ delay, a revised sculpture was dedicated, with a different location and a changed position. The project’s commission and rejection, its rescue and revision, bear recounting because a knowledge of the vicissitudes in the installation of the sculpture can lead to a better understanding of the work in its present location.2 The account in this book will be informed by a broader consideration of public sculpture in Cleveland, of other projects by Oldenburg and van Bruggen, and by a discussion of the nature and technology of the stamping process, as well as some observations about scale, metaphor in art, and cognitive approaches to creativity.
