Claes Oldenburg: Projects for Monuments
![](https://media.mcachicago.org/image/IQI81B5C/original.jpg)
Installation view, Claes Oldenburg: Projects for Monuments, MCA Chicago
Photo: David Van Riper © MCA Chicago![](https://media.mcachicago.org/image/IQI819SD/original.jpg)
Installation view, Claes Oldenburg: Projects for Monuments, MCA Chicago
Photo: David Van Riper © MCA Chicago![](https://media.mcachicago.org/image/IQI81AP5/original.jpg)
Installation view, Claes Oldenburg: Projects for Monuments, MCA Chicago
Photo: David Van Riper © MCA Chicago![](https://media.mcachicago.org/image/IQI819LN/original.jpg)
Exterior view of 237 E. Ontario, work shown: Claes Oldenberg's Poptart, 1967
Photo: David Van Riper © MCA ChicagoAbout
As the MCA's first exhibition alongside Pictures to be Read/Poetry to be Seen, Projects for Monuments assembled over 30 pieces in various mediums by the sculptor and interdisciplinary artist Claes Oldenburg (American, b. 1929) for his first solo show in his hometown of Chicago. The collection addressed topics that would continually re-emerge in Oldenburg's work as subjects of critique, including urban beautification, commodity culture, and the spectacle of so-called “public” art in “public” spaces. The exhibition featured collage compositions, vinyl sculptures, and crayon and wash drawings that served as “proposals” for grandiose and occasionally impossible to realize “monuments.” Each took the form of banal commercial products—or, as the artist dubbed them, “everyday crap”—to be monumentalized at a colossal scale in various urban spaces in New York, London, and Chicago. Though not a part of Projects for Monuments itself, Oldenburg also commissioned a conceptually similar project entitled Poptart
Working in a context between the performative ethos of “happenings” and the more overtly object-based practices of American pop art, much of Oldenburg's work took its precedent from the scatological paintings and sculptural practice of Jean Dubuffet (French, 1901–1985), who, in Oldenburg's words, influenced him to “ask why art is made and what the art process consists of instead of trying to conform to and extend a tradition.” Though Projects for Monuments departed from Oldenburg's performative and participatory “happening” works, such as Snapshots from the City
Among the most memorable proposals in the exhibition were the postcard collages and drawings created for Colossal Monument for Grant Park, Chicago: Windshield Wiper