Claes Oldenburg

I learned today that legendary sculptor, Claes Oldenburg, famous for his irreverence, his ability to subvert the mundane and elevate it, is an alumni of my high school. So is Nancy Reagan, by the way–I find the timing, like many moments in my life terribly, conveniently, coincidental.

I try to spend time each month wandering around New York's gallery neighborhoods to remain engaged with the goings on within, to scout for shows and talents that surprise me, to find artwork that speaks. Typically, I do not set an itinerary, I have no set plans, no specific places to be, I often happen on things, which is honestly the way I like to do things best.

Last week I happened upon Claes Oldenburg's Shelf Life at Pace Gallery. . . I know, I know, blockbuster artist, blockbuster gallery, how can one happen upon it, but I tend to keep my distance from blockbusters because I find that they offer little in the way of surprise. And I was surprised–surprised by how much I enjoyed the show and by the nostalgia that Oldenburg's shelf-sized assemblages awoke within me.

California Hallway, c. 1940 | Courtesy the Art Institute of Chicago

Growing up in Chicago I was fortunate to have had access to some of the world's foremost cultural institutions; chief among them the Art Institute of Chicago, which I insisted on visiting not because of the quality of the artwork therein, nor the importance of their private collection, but because of the Thorne Miniature Rooms. Hidden away by the educational resources room and the bathrooms is a collection of 68 miniature rooms built and decorated to represent a series of different interiors of homes from the Western world. 

The Thorne rooms kept me enthralled, no matter how many times I had been to see them, no matter how many minutes or hours I spent in their presence. I admit they still do today. I can recall pressing my nose to the glass behind which they were displayed to try and see into corners and behind doors, I could spend an entire day imagining the worlds contained within those tiny rooms–many of which are scarcely bigger than a foot in a half in any direction. 

Claes Oldenburg, Shelf Life Number 10, detail

I felt twinges of that old curiosity walking through Oldenburg's Shelf Life. I delighted in the cameos made by some of his most famous piece–a mini version of his iconic Floor Burger, a minute and sketched version of the apple core sculpture that lives at San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art, a palm-sized, monochrome homage to the slice of blueberry pie that once sat on New York's Metropolitan Museum's roof. I was thrilled by their presence, a direct reference to the power of nostalgia as a tool to reach out and touch viewers through the vehicle of personal experience. Not unlike a paintbrush, or a blob of clay, nostalgia is a media unto itself that is powerful enough to connect viewers of all hearts and minds. It sounds crazy; how does a piece of crumpled up paper made to resemble a hamburger make one feel nostalgic for childhood? I answer that it does not, not the object itself, not the paper, not the hamburger, no, but the unit as a whole. Oldenburg's venture into the small-scale, in opposition to his career-long exploration of the monumental, could be too referential to his past work to stand on its own. I believe however, that that is where Oldenburg's "genius" lies, in taking that chance, and in speaking to my 8 year old self, using the smallest of gestures.

Claes Oldenburg, Shelf Life Number 11, 2016-2017 | Mixed media, 20 x 29 x 12 inches

Desolation Row

Once upon a time, a cabin-full of girls set out on their first overnight camping trip. They were 11 and 12 and 13 years old, and crazed, and silly, and nervous, and a little wild. They hiked through the backwoods of Wisconsin, pausing to eat bagged lunches, take pee breaks, and dawdle. The day grew long, and the sun hot, the girls grew tired as their packs began weigh on them. With supplies and morale dwindling, a compass and a topographical map for guidance, they realized they were hopelessly and irredeemably lost. Apprehension prickled at the backs of their necks–perhaps they'd been wandering in circles, perhaps they were no longer in Wisconsin, perhaps they'd gotten lost before they'd ever really gotten started. Finally, out of the haze kicked up by their boots a clearing appeared beside which lay a blessed lake. Whooping and screaming with joy the girls threw off their packs and began to make camp, practicing their newly acquired outdoor skills. Some girls set to pitching tents, others to gathering water, while the final few began to lay out kindling and firewood for their campfire. Carefully constructing the Teepee wood-lay out of the abundance of dry woods and grasses around them they had forgotten their earlier trepidation, shucking it off with their backpacks. As the match was lit, a breeze began to blow, lifting the hair up off of their sweaty necks, and breathing vitality back into the ragged group. The breeze breathed vitality into the small and winking flame of the match, which in turn gave life to the campfire that would steal life from acres upon acres of forest surrounding it. Several moments passed, and several more–the girls could never know that the land they had decided to camp on was privately owned, they could never know that the forest they camped in was in the midst of one of its driest periods in 30 years, they could never know that they had mislaid their Teepee until they knew. The fire burst free from its bounds. It devoured the grasses and woods the girls had laid too large. The fire devoured, as if it could never be sated, the ground at the girls' feet, a tent, several backpacks, the clearing, and finally, 36-odd acres of protected Wisconsin forest. The girls tried to fight the fire; they tried to bring water from the lake, they tried to dump sand to suffocate it, one ran miles up the road to find a phone, they took sleeping bags, and tarps, and even the shirts they wore to the fire in a furious attempt to beat it back until it was clear there was nothing to do but stand back and gape in abject horror as the fire they had birthed consumed everything it touched. Some could not endure the sight and fell to their knees. Most cried. A few turned away and into the embraces offered up to each other. One–I–did not. I did not cry. I did not scream. I stood, trembling and soot-stained with my burned through t-shirt in my hands, and watched. 

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Roxy Paine, Oscillation (Replicant), 2010 | Photograph by Jeremy Liebman / James Cohan Gallery © Roxy Paine, courtesy of Whitehot Magazine

Although we were cleared of any culpability, after all, we were just children, left neglected and unattended by our chaperones, we were forced to return to the burn site twice more. While embers still smoldered, we were made to stand and look upon the destruction we had so carelessly wrought. I grieved for what seemed to me a nearly limitless loss.

I thought the feeling, in the nearly twenty intervening years, was a memory. One rarely revisited, and rarely contemplated. When I walked into Paul Kasmin Gallery on 10th avenue in Chelsea, and into Roxy Paine's Farewell Transmission I found myself a trembling, 12 year-old again. Divided into three separate spaces were three separate scenes, the most poignant of which was entitled Desolation Row (2017). In the vein of table-top architectural models and grade-school dioramas, Paine presented a scene of complete and utter decimation that resonated deeply within my 12 year-old's heart. Spread over 13' lay a forest, burned out and devoid of any trace of life.

Roxy Paine, Oscillation, 2010, detail

I was familiar with Paine's work, having interned at a gallery that hosted an exhibition of his some years back, where a swirling vortex of his "replicants" of mushrooms had been installed on a wall. As a lowly intern I was tasked with the privilege of sitting at reception, fielding questions from gallery goers, and, more often than not, castigating those who touched the uncannily life-like mushrooms sprouting from the wall. Paine is an enormously skilled craftsman, with the ability to transform inorganic materials into organic forms realistic enough to fool even the most astute observer. Indeed, I could hardly believe the mushrooms were made of polymers and paint until I held one in the palm of my hand. 

Roxy Paine's skill at recreating the natural world around us is the reason that Desolation Row delivered such a visceral blow to me as I entered the room in which it was displayed. I felt again, profoundly, the grief of having had a hand in similar, albeit real, destruction. Even though, weirdly, there was no smoke, no scent of char, nor any real consequence like those we had faced as campers. Glowing orange diodes strategically placed in felled trees gave the impression that the coals could be fanned and the fire could flare again at any moment. They frightened me. Paine's heartbreaking commentary on the perpetual struggle between man and nature, and man's drive to conquer the unconquerable left me breathless.