Artist:
Claes Oldenburg
Title:
Lipstick with Stroke Attached (to M.M.)
Year:
1994
Adress:
Akebonocho, Tachikawa-shi
www.khanacademy.org:
Oldenburg had experimented with lipstick forms earlier in the 1960s, pasting catalog images of lipstick onto postcards of London’s Picadilly Circus. The resulting collages showed lipstick tubes looming like massive pillars over Picadilly’s plaza. In the Yale sculpture, the artist combined the highly 'feminine' product with the 'masculine' machinery of war. In doing so, he playfully critiqued both the hawkish, hyper-masculine rhetoric of the military and the blatant consumerism of the United States.
In addition to its feminine associations, the large lipstick tube is phallic and bullet-like, making the benign beauty product seem masculine or even violent. The juxtaposition implied that the U.S. obsession with beauty and consumption both fueled and distracted from the ongoing violence in Vietnam.
A monumental tube of lipstick sprouting from a military vehicle appeared, uninvited, on the campus of Yale University amidst the 1969 student protests against the Vietnam War. While the sculpture may have seemed like a playful, if elaborate artistic joke, Claes Oldenburg’s Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks was also deeply critical. Oldenburg made the 24-foot-high sculpture in collaboration with architecture students at his alma mater and then surreptitiously delivered it to Yale’s Beinecke Plaza. In Beinecke Plaza, the sculpture overlooked both the office of Yale’s president and a prominent World War I memorial. Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks claimed a visible space for the anti-war movement while also poking fun at the solemnity of the plaza. The sculpture served as a stage and backdrop for several subsequent student protests.
www.tandfonline.com:
This article traces Oldenburg's art through the 1960s and situates his practice within contemporary discourses in painting and sculpture, architecture and urbanism. It suggests that his art paralleled, and even anticipated, emerging perspectives on postmodern spaces, especially in terms of perceptual experiences in and representational strategies for the city. Beginning with The Store (1961), which might be considered his first public work, continuing with the proposals for colossal monuments (that situated gigantic objects in urban spaces), and culminating with the Lipstick (1969; that galvanized local debates about public sculpture), this essay emphasizes the importance of Oldenburg's early production and demonstrates his intentional pursuit of a more public practice.
Oldenburg had experimented with lipstick forms earlier in the 1960s, pasting catalog images of lipstick onto postcards of London’s Picadilly Circus. The resulting collages showed lipstick tubes looming like massive pillars over Picadilly’s plaza. In the Yale sculpture, the artist combined the highly 'feminine' product with the 'masculine' machinery of war. In doing so, he playfully critiqued both the hawkish, hyper-masculine rhetoric of the military and the blatant consumerism of the United States.
In addition to its feminine associations, the large lipstick tube is phallic and bullet-like, making the benign beauty product seem masculine or even violent. The juxtaposition implied that the U.S. obsession with beauty and consumption both fueled and distracted from the ongoing violence in Vietnam.
A monumental tube of lipstick sprouting from a military vehicle appeared, uninvited, on the campus of Yale University amidst the 1969 student protests against the Vietnam War. While the sculpture may have seemed like a playful, if elaborate artistic joke, Claes Oldenburg’s Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks was also deeply critical. Oldenburg made the 24-foot-high sculpture in collaboration with architecture students at his alma mater and then surreptitiously delivered it to Yale’s Beinecke Plaza. In Beinecke Plaza, the sculpture overlooked both the office of Yale’s president and a prominent World War I memorial. Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks claimed a visible space for the anti-war movement while also poking fun at the solemnity of the plaza. The sculpture served as a stage and backdrop for several subsequent student protests.
www.tandfonline.com:
This article traces Oldenburg's art through the 1960s and situates his practice within contemporary discourses in painting and sculpture, architecture and urbanism. It suggests that his art paralleled, and even anticipated, emerging perspectives on postmodern spaces, especially in terms of perceptual experiences in and representational strategies for the city. Beginning with The Store (1961), which might be considered his first public work, continuing with the proposals for colossal monuments (that situated gigantic objects in urban spaces), and culminating with the Lipstick (1969; that galvanized local debates about public sculpture), this essay emphasizes the importance of Oldenburg's early production and demonstrates his intentional pursuit of a more public practice.