Abstract
In 1968, Social theorist Herbert Marcuse, remarked that if a Claes Oldenburg proposed monument were actualized, “you would have a revolution.” Marcuse’s statement instigated the first installation of an Oldenburg “proposed” monument: “Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks,” at Yale University in 1969. Alluding to war and sex in volatile times—Vietnam War, civil rights, urban unrest, feminism—”Lipstick” proved so disturbing that the University removed it (later returned to a less prominent spot). Eight years elapsed before another Oldenburg monument “went public”: Philadelphia’s 1% piece “Clothespin,” his first and oldest “civic” sculpture. Marcuse’s radical predictions did not transpire, as Oldenburg sculptures have become common urban fixtures. Still, “Clothespin” has charged meaning. Situated across from City Hall at one end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway (dotted by civic institutions), “Clothespin” is partly inspired by Brancusi’s “Kiss” in the Philadelphia Museum at the other end. In its resemblance to Brancusi’s embracing gender-equals, “Clothespin” displays a monumentalized and erotically infused common object that engages with identity art and politics of the 1970s, such as feminism and homosexuality. Appropriate to the “City of Brotherly Love,” “Clothespin” dialogues with Robert Indiana’s “Love” sculpture nearby, a piece that also interrogates similar issues. Oldenburg’s fourth and most recent Philadelphia monument, “Paint Torch” (2011), evoking both the “Statue of Liberty” and “Liberty Bell,” and nodding to the nearby “Clothespin,” also explores the cross-fertilization of art, freedom, and politics.
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