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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

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Claes Oldenburg
Age: 95
Born: 1929
Born: January 28
Designer
Drawer
Graphic Artist
Painter
Performance Artist
Printmaker
Sculptor
Sthlm
Ḳlaʼes Oldenberg
Claes Thure Oldenburg
Draws
Writer
Wasn
Knew
Remember
Better
Writing
Draw
Good
Drawing

More quotes by Claes Oldenburg

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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
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Art is a technique of communication. The image is the most complete technique of all communication.
Claes Oldenburg
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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
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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
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All the fun is locking horns with impossibilities.
Claes Oldenburg
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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
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My rule was not to paint things as they were. I wasn't copying I was remaking them as my own.
Claes Oldenburg
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My mother warned me to avoid things colored red.
Claes Oldenburg
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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
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The right angle is one of the world's basic shapes.
Claes Oldenburg
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I'm in favor of an art that does something other than just sit on its ass in a museum.
Claes Oldenburg
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It 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 Oldenburg
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You can take an object and simply put anything you want in that object, and I accessed that partly through Freudian ideas.
Claes Oldenburg
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Chicago has a strange metaphysical elegance of death about it.
Claes Oldenburg
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For a thorough use of ice cream cones, buy two eat one and drop the other.
Claes Oldenburg
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The art world was very small and the people got together at parties. There was less commercialism.
Claes Oldenburg
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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
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I am for an art that grows up not knowing it is art at all.
Claes Oldenburg
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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
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I 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 Oldenburg