In 1957–58, after he moved to New York’s Lower East Side, Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929) began making collages he has described as “mostly done in an uncontrolled and intuitive dream mode.” Made from found, printed imagery, the Strange Eggs are enigmatic, surrealistic, and vastly different from the Pop art of the 1960s for which he soon became famous.
 These collages are characterized by self-contained forms, or "eggs," the artist made by melding cut fragments of photographic illustrations. While many of the pieces are unrecognizable, some original references are discernible: a piece of pie, the hind leg of a horse, the creased skin of a clenched fist, and the texture of concrete. These eighteen collages were first shown at the Menil Collection in 2012, and they are being published together for the first time, along with poems that the artist wrote at the same time based on found imagery from his walks around New York's Lower East Side. Anticipating second-generation New York School art-poetry collaborations by half a decade, Strange Eggs makes an important single-artist contribution to our understanding of the period.

Strange Eggs: Poems and Cutouts 1956–58

Arts & Photography

OLDENBURG, Claes

History & Criticism

The Menil Collection

These contemporary American artists have produced a series of monumental public sculptures for sites throughout America and Europe, among them the controversial "Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks" at Yale University, "Batcolumn" in Chicago and the "Mistos (Match cover)" in Barcelona. This book details the individual histories of 27 sculptures, presenting the artists' personal viewpoints on them, together with a range of contemporary essays and observations made at the time the works were created. Interwoven into the case histories are original notes and sketches, working drawings, models and engineering plans. Each work is illustrated with colour photographs and numerous documentary photographs from the project's development.

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen: Large-scale Projects

Van Bruggen, Coosje

Celant, Germano

Thames and Hudson Ltd.

Notes in hand

E.P.Dutton & Co.

Best known for recasting familiar objects in unfamiliar textures, media, and dimensions, Claes Oldenburg has long challenged his audience to rethink the everyday with works such as French Fries and Ketchup (1963) and Soft Toilet (1966). Oldenburg's masterful drawings reveal another facet of this pioneering artist, inviting viewers to enter his "fantasy' as they explore Oldenburg's relationship with the medium, from sensitive early explorations to veteran campaigns as a refined and accomplished draftsman. Drawing is crucial to Oldenburg's art: drawings note the beginning of an idea; they develop the thought; they give birth to his sculptures. The medium offers a flexibility particularly suited to the artist's extraordinary visions, enhancing the effectiveness of his manipulations of scale and perspective in sculpture. Pieces such as Proposed Colossal Monument for Central Park North, N.Y.C.- Teddy Bear (1965); Various Positions of a Giant Lipstick to Replace the Fountain of Eros, Piccadilly Circus, London (1966); Proposal for a Cathedral in the Form of a Colossal Faucet, Lake Union, Seattle (1972); and Blueberry Pie a la Mode, Sliding down a Hill (1996) usher viewers into a chimerical world of the mundane made significant.

Claes Oldenburg Drawings in the Whitney Museum of American Art

Lee, Janie C.

Whitney Museum of American Art

Bruggen, Coosje van.

Harry N.Abrams, Inc.

Claes Oldenburg: An Anthology

Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929) first made his mark on the New York art scene in the early 1960s, and from that time he has been widely regarded as one of America's most influential and appealing artists. His subject matter is the everyday object - food, clothing, mechanical devices, and the like - which he reincarnates into witty and provocative sculptures ranging in scale from the intimate to the expansive. This volume, published to accompany a major retrospective organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, is the most comprehensive to date on Oldenburg and his multifaceted art. Interweaving photographs of installations and Happenings, texts, and new reproductions of the sculptures and drawings, this lavishly produced book traces Oldenburg's entire career. Among the subjects presented are The Street, his early exhibition devoted to the street life of New York City; The Store, his infamous array of painted plaster sculptures of food and clothing, which he sold in a Manhattan storefront; the celebrated soft sculptures; his drawings for fanciful monuments; and the large-scale public projects made in collaboration with Coosje van Bruggen.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

National Gallery of Art (U.S.)

Individual Artists

Guggenheim Museum Pubns

"A selection of fifty pages from the private notebooks of Claes Oldenburg."

NOTES IN HAND.

PETERSBURG PRESS. LONDON 1971

A giant spoon with an enormous red cherry snaking out of the earth, a humongous badminton birdie, an oversized piece of cake, squishy scupltures--these are some of the works for which Claes Oldenburg, the artist who helped redefine sculpture in the 1960s, is best known. However, because they have been less documented, Oldenburg's happenings and performances have not been fully integrated into the critical discourse surrounding his work. Raw Notes, originally published in 1973, collects all of the material relating to his performances. According to his specifications, the text in the book is typed rather then set, and appears on only one side of the page. Examples of the original manuscript are reproduced in 63 script plates. These include stage plans, scores, sketches for programs, and posters. More than 200 annotations by the author expand the text. Raw Notes is indispensable as a document of the important aspects of Oldenburg's work.

Raw Notes: Documents and Scripts of the Performances: Stars, Moveyhouse, Massage, the Typewriter

New York University Press

A giant spoon with an enormous red cherry snaking out of the earth, a humongous badminton birdie, an oversized piece of cake, squishy scupltures--these are some of the works for which Claes Oldenburg, the artist who helped redefine sculpture in the 1960s, is best known. However, because they have been less documented, Oldenburg's happenings and performances have not been fully integrated into the critical discourse surrounding his work. Raw Notes, originally published in 1973, collects all of the material relating to his performances. According to his specifications, the text in the book is typed rather then set, and appears on only one side of the page. Examples of the original manuscript are reproduced in 63 script plates. These include stage plans, scores, sketches for programs, and posters. More than 200 annotations by the author expand the text. Raw Notes is indispensable as a document of the important aspects of Oldenburg's work.

Raw Notes: Documents and Scripts of the Performances: Stars, Moveyhouse, Massage, The Typewriter, with annotations by the author

NYU Press

Claes Oldenburg: The multiples store

National Touring Exhibitions (

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