Quote

I 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 Oldenburg

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Claes Oldenburg
Age: 95
Born: 1929
Born: January 28
Designer
Drawer
Graphic Artist
Painter
Performance Artist
Printmaker
Sculptor
Sthlm
Ḳlaʼes Oldenberg
Claes Thure Oldenburg
Life
Spit
Heavy
Drips
Sweet
Spits
Stupid
Accumulates
Takes
Extends
Lines
Coarse
Art
Blunt
Form
Twists

More quotes by Claes Oldenburg

Image
My rule was not to paint things as they were. I wasn't copying I was remaking them as my own.
Claes Oldenburg
Image
I am for an art that grows up not knowing it is art at all.
Claes Oldenburg
Image
Duchamp is known for calling a thing art, rather than making it. A lot of that is picked up in pop art, too.
Claes Oldenburg
Image
Ox-Bow was a very free place, very open. You could do whatever you wanted to do.
Claes Oldenburg
Image
I 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 Oldenburg
Image
I 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 Oldenburg
Image
All the fun is locking horns with impossibilities.
Claes Oldenburg
Image
I'm in favor of an art that does something other than just sit on its ass in a museum.
Claes Oldenburg
Image
Of 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 Oldenburg
Image
Andy [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 Oldenburg
Image
For a thorough use of ice cream cones, buy two eat one and drop the other.
Claes Oldenburg
Image
Art is a technique of communication. The image is the most complete technique of all communication.
Claes Oldenburg
Image
The right angle is one of the world's basic shapes.
Claes Oldenburg
Image
I 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 Oldenburg
Image
I was very happy to be living in New York at that time, more than in the present time. Now it's all commerce.
Claes Oldenburg
Image
I 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 Oldenburg
Image
Food 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 Oldenburg
Image
I am for the art of underwear and the art of taxicabs. I am for the art of ice cream cones dropped on concrete.
Claes Oldenburg
Image
In 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 Oldenburg
Image
I 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 Oldenburg