Only Connect the Interlocking Image

CLAES OLDENBURG is not just a sculptor, he is a magician. Ordinary objects, under his hands, metamorphose into vital and eloquent forms; he can create an Ovidian phantasmagoria from a cigarette butt, or animate a movie camera. His art works imaginative miracles with the stuff of everyday existence. Typewriter erasers are infused with life, clothespins garbed in symbolism. He's the type of person who could change your water into wine.

Oldenburg's drawings and sculpture realize the magic of his thought. The current exhibition, held jointly at the Institute of Contemporary Art, in Boston, and Hayden Gallery at MIT, focuses on six themes the Swedish-born sculptor has developed over the last ten years: "Geometric Mouse", "Three-way Plug", "Clothespin", "Fagends", "Typewriter Eraser", and "Standing Mitt with Ball". In each case, Oldenburg considers a commonplace object, analyzes it in terms of texture, volume, form, etc., then manipulates the essence he has extracted. Using a process of free association, he fuses images, correlating aspects of the original object to other things or concepts. For example, a mitt, which he purchased in a Kresges dime store for 96 cents suggests to him a clam, or a landscape, a "sunrise set". Conversely, he sees the "mitt" form in a milkweed pod, in an ear, in a platter of fried eggs, of pie a la mode. The original mitt is also part of the ICA exhibit. It is carefully labeled: "on loan from Claes Oldenburg".

The simple utilitarian objects Oldenburg uses as a foundation for his creation inspire him with affection, even reverence. He says about the clothespin:

"Clothespins are a studio necessity for me. With clothespins I join parts of soft sculpture in preparation for sewing. Clothespins are the instruments of connection which are so important in the fabrication of my work. The most efficient clothespin is the old-fashioned one which has the little spring on it. I prefer the ones made of wood. My studio is full of clothespins. I handle these objects. After a while I begin to see them as much larger structures than they actually are, and think about enlarging them. They have an architectural character, like the three-way plugs which also lie about my studio."

Quite literally, Oldenburg envisions these objects--clothespins, or three-way plugs--as monuments. With the exception of the Typewriter Eraser, each has been executed on a colossal scale. These colossi are impressive: a ten-foot clothespin towers up in golden splendour, refined, stripped to bare geometric form; a 20-foot vinyl three-way plug hangs limply from the ceiling, inviting caresses. (In the present exhibit, the larger pieces are at MIT, while the drawings, for the most part, are at the ICA. The MIT part of the exhibit should be seen after the ICA portion, since the large sculptures are logical and spatial extensions of the ideas conceived in the drawings.)

IN ONE PRINT, Oldenburg compares his clothespin to Brancusi's sculpture, The Kiss. The form he discovered and liberated sustains the comparison. In fact, the clothespin as Oldenburg has perceived it pushes Brancusi's conception farther than Brancusi does, being more truly two-in-one. The spring presses the two identical pieces of metal more tightly against each other than the encircling arms of Brancusi's stone lovers pull them together. Not only does Oldenburg's structure express a more intimate formal relationship, but his "two" are one--they are made out of one sheet of metal, with a groove down the center. Oldenburg describes the work as "the structural expression of the 'unity of the two'.

Clothespins, three-way plugs, cigarette butts. All seem to suggest Oldenburg is playing a visual joke on his unsuspecting and gullible audience.

But "joke" is the wrong word. Oldenburg's art is not comic, though it is humorous. He has no attitude of superiority, he is pulling no tricks on Everyman. He finds his own magic sexually mysterious himself. "My forms ...are constantly engaged in promiscusous intercourse and may turn up as almost anything," he says. He presents his work as a sort of subconscious process of spontaneous generation rather than a plotted contrivance to substitute one thing for another. He is often gently self-mocking, quietly deflating his own balloons. Works like his Paste-up for mitt print with Bob poke fun at the artistic process. The sketched-in mitt is carefully labeled with the materials in which it is constructed; the palm is labeled "lead", the supporting frame "steel", the ball, "wood". The man who is keeping the mitt from toppling over, is labeled too: "Bob".

Oldenburg's humor comes from his awareness and appreciation of the human element that supports his art. So his drawings can be hilarious, but they are never glib, or snide. A sketch such as Fagends in Hyde Park is funny because of the innocence and incongruity of the vision; the wit in seeing the bristles of a typewriter eraser as broccoli lies in yoking two seemingly disconnected things.

Understanding an art like this requires an imagination that is flexible, free, childlike--a dancing mind. For Oldenburg's works depend on the capacity of the human mind to dance; they have meaning because they stimulate the observer to perform the same intellectual acrobatics that the artist did when conceiving the piece. This art is metaphoric as well as metamorphic and it demands mental participation in all the associations made and transformations performed. Aspects of reality which would never be rationally juxtaposed are struck together--sparks fly. The typewriter eraser, for example, becomes a tornado in one series of drawings. The round rubber spins violently around the center screw (the eye of the tornado) and the trailing brush sweeps all before it, leaving a dust cloud in its wake. The seemingly innocuous object reveals itself as a force of destruction.

In his quest for links, for symbols, Oldenburg has made himself a symbol, associated himself with an image. The "geometric mouse" has come to be a metaphor for his work. First developed in 1965 from the geometry of a movie camera, the mouse is the only one of his themes to have assumed the name of an animate being. Actually it looks very little like a mouse. Oldenburg calls the geometric mouse "a symbol of analysis and intellect". He identifies with it ("I'm the Mouse"); one of the funniest drawings at the ICA is a "self-portrait as a Mystical Mouse". On the front of the artist's shirt is scribbled: "objects", but to mock the possible Significance of that, along the side is written "KING KONG".

The mouse is subjected to some of the most fantastic variations of all; the eyes alone, for example, are drawn as teabags; window shades, or light switches. A "system of iconography" (also the title of a sketch) is derived from the mouse's circles and squares. Simplifying the mouse form, Oldenburg plays with it. He stamps it on everything, designs kites, banners, costumes in its image. Mice appear with bras on their ears, or half under water. Other things suggest mice to his roaming pencil: a map of New York City, an arrangement of pillows. What makes Oldenburg's outrageous associations appear real and important discoveries is that none of them is an imposed vision; in each case he seems to be merely extracting something that was already there, but buried, brushing off his find for us to see.

The mouse becomes an idol: The Mouse God Multiple, a stack of geometric mice becomes a temple. Oldenburg jots down a progression on the drawings: "ziggurat/-pyramid/mouse". The mouse is real architecture too--it was used as a blueprint for a Maus Museum, erected in 1972 to house a collection of Oldenburg's objects, the precious common things that provide springboards for his imagination.

One mouse structure, never realized, called for the building of a huge facade-face of a mouse on the hills over Hollywood. The tongue (originally the handle of the movie camera) was to protrude out into space. From this elevation the movie camera-mask-mouse-skull would watch over Hollywood, its creation and its creator. Oldenburg commented: "Maybe people would commit suicide off the tongue, like the Golden Gate bridge."

But Oldenburg does not push his conceptualizing and image generating into such an abyss; he only takes it up to the brink, and looks over. The view is technicolored, panoramic.

It might make you giddy if you don't like heights.