I 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 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 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 got a job as a dishwasher in Oakland, and I would draw all day. It was nice because the lady who ran the boardinghouse where I worked let me live there for nothing if I gave her some drawings every week - mostly park drawings of birds and such.
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 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