The art world was very small and the people got together at parties. There was less commercialism.
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 OldenburgWhen you're working with an object, you can put in almost anything you want, you can make it abstract.
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 Oldenburg