"I make my work out of my everyday experiences, which I find as perplexing and extraordinary as can be. "
Corridor Pin, Blue, 1999,
by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen
In the mid-1960s Claes Oldenburg began to make drawings of monuments based on common objects, such as a clothespin or a pair of scissors, challenging the notion that public monuments must commemorate historical figures or events. The artist's selection of discredited or obsolete objects extends to those remembered from childhood. As a youngster he enjoyed playing in his father's office with a typewriter eraser. In the late 1960s and 1970s he used the eraser as a source for drawings, prints, sculpture, and even a never-realized monument for New York City.
