I was always interested in drawing. As a child, I started my own country, which was called Neubern. It was located in the South Atlantic. I did the documentation of Neubern in great detail. I drew everything that was there, all the houses and all the cars and all the people. We even had a navy and an air force. I spent a lot of time drawing.
Claes OldenburgThe thing about the ray gun is, you pick up anything you see on the street that's the shape of a gun.
Claes OldenburgI am preoccupied with the possibility of creating art which functions in a public situation without compromising its private character of being antiheroic, antimonumental, antiabstract, and antigeneral. The paradox is intensified by the use on a grand scale of small-scale subjects known from intimate situations--an approach which tends in turn to reduce the scale of the real landscape to imaginary dimensions.
Claes OldenburgI started to draw buildings. I called them Proposed Colossal Monuments - they weren't for real, not for actual building. It was more a critique of architecture.
Claes OldenburgMy work doesn't have the same rules as, say, Andy [Warhol]'s work. But it's gathered together for the simple reason that we all worked with the images and objects around us.
Claes OldenburgI knew I wasn't that good a writer, and all I could remember was that I could draw. I'm better at drawing than I am at writing.
Claes OldenburgYou can take an object and simply put anything you want in that object, and I accessed that partly through Freudian ideas.
Claes OldenburgI am for an art that takes its form from the lines of life itself, that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips, and is heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself.
Claes OldenburgIf I didn't think what I was doing had something to do with enlarging the boundaries of art, I wouldn't go on doing it.
Claes OldenburgThe end of the '60s was a terrible time. I was in Los Angeles then, and I remember the night someone ran into the studio and told us about the Manson murders. Then suddenly something happened, the '60s disappeared. The '70s were completely different.
Claes OldenburgI am for the art of underwear and the art of taxicabs. I am for the art of ice cream cones dropped on concrete.
Claes OldenburgI am for an art that tells you the time of day, or where such and such a street is. I am for an art that helps old ladies across the street.
Claes OldenburgI had no idea what art was. There was one art class in high school, but it didn't make a big impression on me. Then I went to college and thought I'd become a writer.
Claes OldenburgAndy [Warhol] was on the scene, but he wasn't an artist at first; he was more an illustrator. He was always surrounded by about ten people who worshipped him. He'd go to a party and they would all come along. But he was drawing shoes and that sort of thing.
Claes OldenburgI had, over the years, collected things, small things, as people do, and I had put them all together and showed them in what became a building in the form of the Geometric Mouse.
Claes OldenburgIn 1958 I finally found a large enough apartment on the Lower East Side, where I reverted to figure painting. I drew and painted quite a lot of figures and nudes. People would come and pose for me.
Claes OldenburgThe main reason for the colossal objects is the obvious one, to expand and intensify the presence of the vessel - the object.
Claes OldenburgI always knew America was all about guns. You go to the movies as a kid, everybody's got a gun.
Claes OldenburgI don't do abstract art because I don't find it as interesting as I do subjects and depictions.
Claes OldenburgArt is a technique of communication. The image is the most complete technique of all communication.
Claes OldenburgThe sexual is part of everything, and it's highly formalized. I hadn't done figure for a long time. And I thought to myself, "Why not the erotic figure?"
Claes OldenburgThe art world was very small and the people got together at parties. There was less commercialism.
Claes OldenburgI just started to do my own thing for about a year and a half, and I worked in the evening selling phonograph records. Then I said to myself, "I'm afraid I have to go to New York after all."
Claes OldenburgI am for an art of things lost or thrown away. . . I am for an art that one smokes like a cigarette. . . I am for an art that flutters like a flag.
Claes OldenburgI got a little studio in Chicago and practiced. I realized I had to earn some money. So I went to work for an advertising agency where my job was mostly drawing insects for a company that sold an insecticide spray.
Claes OldenburgFood is like clay; you can sculpt with it. Also it has an odor, and you can eat it. I don't eat a lot of cake, but I do make cakes! And unlike the Campbell's Soup Cans, my food is a humanized form and scale.
Claes OldenburgActually, New York is great for playing around. I made a lot of studies for New York-a big vacuum cleaner lying on the Battery in Manhattan.
Claes OldenburgJudson Church was a very important place because they believed in art. They also took care of drug addicts. Without the Judson, nothing could have happened.
Claes OldenburgBecause my work is naturally non-meaningful, the meaning found in it will remain doubtful and inconsistent - which is the way it should be. All that I care about is that, like any startling piece of nature, it should be capable of stimulating meaning.
Claes OldenburgDuchamp is known for calling a thing art, rather than making it. A lot of that is picked up in pop art, too.
Claes OldenburgI am an immigrant in a sense. What happened was that my father was stationed in New York when my mother became pregnant, and she said, "I've got to go to Sweden so this child can be born there, because you don't have any idea where you're going to be transferred next."
Claes OldenburgI went back to the Art Institute, then spent the summer at the Ox-Bow School in Saugatuck, Michigan. That's what really awakened me. I made a lot of oil paintings and my first performance.
Claes OldenburgIt was easy to get a job at the Cedar Bar because people came and went, but I didn't like the atmosphere. Instead, I got a job at Cooper Union Library. I stayed at Cooper Union for seven years; it was my salvation. While I worked there, I also read books of every kind.
Claes OldenburgI knew I had to take my ambition more seriously, so I enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago. Then, in the fall, I went on a tour of my own. I didn't go to New York because that was too well known for its art scene.
Claes OldenburgI was very happy to be living in New York at that time, more than in the present time. Now it's all commerce.
Claes OldenburgI think the Freudian impulse is in everything, so I just accept it. I don't always believe what Freud is saying but it sounds like fun.
Claes OldenburgOf course, the '60s was a study in decadence. Everything just got worse and worse, and at the end of the '60s, everything was so horrible that people were killing each other.
Claes OldenburgThey asked me to do a show, and I was planning on showing my figure paintings. But my friends told me I shouldn't - the paintings were good but a little old-fashioned. They said, "Why don't you show the other stuff?" I had also been making rather strange objects, more in the Freudian tradition.
Claes Oldenburg