Claes Oldenburg Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• I was always interested in drawing. As a child, I started my own country, which was called Neubern. It was located in the South Atlantic. I did the documentation of Neubern in great detail. I drew everything that was there, all the houses and all the cars and all the people. We even had a navy and an air force. I spent a lot of time drawing.

  Claes Oldenburg

  Country, Children, Air

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Party, Artist, Shoes

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• The right angle is one of the world's basic shapes.

  Claes Oldenburg

  World, Shapes, Angle

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  10 Copy quote

• I always knew America was all about guns. You go to the movies as a kid, everybody's got a gun.

  Claes Oldenburg

  Kids, Gun, America

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• The art world was very small and the people got together at parties. There was less commercialism.

  Claes Oldenburg

  Art, People, Together

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  5 Copy quote

• The sexual is part of everything, and it's highly formalized. I hadn't done figure for a long time. And I thought to myself, "Why not the erotic figure?"

  Claes Oldenburg

  Long, Erotic, Why Not

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  7 Copy quote

• 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 Oldenburg

  Real, Architecture, Building

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• The thing about the ray gun is, you pick up anything you see on the street that's the shape of a gun.

  Claes Oldenburg

  Gun, Rays, Shapes

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Chicago has a strange metaphysical elegance of death about it.

  Claes Oldenburg

  Cities, Chicago, Strange

  Claes Oldenburg (1969). “Proposals for monuments and buildings, 1965-69”

  16 Copy quote

• I had, over the years, collected things, small things, as people do, and I had put them all together and showed them in what became a building in the form of the Geometric Mouse.

  Claes Oldenburg

  Years, People, Together

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• They 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

  Littles, Stuff, Strange

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  9 Copy quote

• Judson Church was a very important place because they believed in art. They also took care of drug addicts. Without the Judson, nothing could have happened.

  Claes Oldenburg

  Art, Drug, Important

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  7 Copy quote

• The end of the '60s was a terrible time. I was in Los Angeles then, and I remember the night someone ran into the studio and told us about the Manson murders. Then suddenly something happened, the '60s disappeared. The '70s were completely different.

  Claes Oldenburg

  Night, Different, Remember

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Actually, New York is great for playing around. I made a lot of studies for New York-a big vacuum cleaner lying on the Battery in Manhattan.

  Claes Oldenburg

  New York, Lying, Vacuums

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Writing, Drawing, Remember

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I knew I had to take my ambition more seriously, so I enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago. Then, in the fall, I went on a tour of my own. I didn't go to New York because that was too well known for its art scene.

  Claes Oldenburg

  Art, New York, Fall

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Art, School, College

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Jobs, Nice, Oakland

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  6 Copy quote

• Ox-Bow was a very free place, very open. You could do whatever you wanted to do.

  Claes Oldenburg

  Bows, Wanted

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I 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 Oldenburg

  Mother, New York, Children

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• You can take an object and simply put anything you want in that object, and I accessed that partly through Freudian ideas.

  Claes Oldenburg

  Ideas, Want, Objects

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Jobs, Book, Years

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  People, East, Sides

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  New York, Very Happy, Commerce

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I got a little studio in Chicago and practiced. I realized I had to earn some money. So I went to work for an advertising agency where my job was mostly drawing insects for a company that sold an insecticide spray.

  Claes Oldenburg

  Jobs, Agency, Drawing

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

Page 2 of 3

First

← Prev

1

2

3

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin