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Claes OldenburgLipstick Ascending the Caterpillar Tracks, plus Novum Organum No. 7, Yale Univ.1969
1969
About the Item
Claes Oldenburg
Lipstick Ascending the Caterpillar Tracks (Print), plus Novum Organum No. 7, Yale University (broadside), 1969
Print is a Photo offset lithograph on two sided paper, plus separate broadside on offset lithograph
Hand signed boldly in black marker and numbered 116
34 × 24 inches
Published by Yale University, New Haven, CT
Unframed
Note: This print is THE original 1969 photolithograph - not to be confused with the poster or later editioned works created in the 1970s. See history below:
This listing features 2 Elements:
(1) A 2 sided photolithograph of the installation plans for Oldenburg's monumental lipstick sculpture- installed at the height of the pop art movement - a large military tank with a monumental tube of lipstick sprouting out of it appearing uninvited on Yale University's campus in 1969 amidst heated protests against the Vietnam war. This signed and numbered print is based upon Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks - a weathering steel sculpture by Claes Oldenburg. It is located at Morse College Courtyard, Yale University. An architecture student, Stuart Wrede, and a group of architecture students raised money, under the name of the Colossal Keepsake Corporation of Connecticut, and worked in collaboration with the artist. In addition to the pictured front side, the print also has a back side of arranged text and articles from press releases and statements published by the "Colossal Keepsake Corporation of Connecticut," The work was installed on May 15, 1969, in Beinecke Plaza at Yale University, as a speakers' platform for anti-war protests. It had a soft, inflated lipstick section, and wooden treads. The lipstick was also laden with symbolism, as women were admitted to Yale for the first time in the Fall of 1969. Over the next few years, the sculpture deteriorated and was removed by Oldenburg in March 1970. It was redone in weathering steel and fiberglass, and reinstalled at Morse College, on October 17, 1974. It has been shown at the Guggenheim Museum and The National Gallery of Art. 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 of the war. (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 became a visible symbol of the anti-war movement that sprung up on college campuses, while also poking fun at the solemnity of the plaza in the academy (Yale). The sculpture served as a stage and backdrop for several subsequent student protests.
This is the ORIGINAL photolithographic print published in 1969, that was included inside the broadside that accompanies it. It is hand signed by Oldenburg and numbered 116. There was also a pink edition of this print, also published in 1969, an example of which is held in the permanent collection of the Tate Gallery. Below is an excerpt from the Tate Gallery website, which describes some of the later editions produced AFTER this original one:
"...Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks is a print of a drawing of the large-scale outdoor sculpture of the same name produced in 1969 (Yale University, New Haven). It represents a side-elevation drawing of a giant retractable lipstick mounted on the chassis of a tank-like vehicle with caterpillar tracks. The chassis has been squared up for enlargement, with calculations added. The drawing reproduced in this print provided the basis for an abandoned heliogravure print in 1971, realised in 1972 as a six-colour lithograph produced in an edition of one hundred copies (published by Paul Bianchini, New York). This print, however, was produced in 1969 in a broadsheet print magazine published by architecture students at Yale celebrating the gift of the sculpture to the university (Novum Organum no.7, Special ‘Colossal Monument’ Issue, 15 May 1969). The print was conceived as a work in its own right and was included in the publication Oldenburg: Works in Edition (1971)..."
The second element in this lot is even more scarce - see description below:
(2) Novum Organum, No. 7: Special “Colossal Monument” Issue focusing on recent gift of Claes Oldenburg’s “Lipstick Ascending on Caterpillar Tracks” - May 15, 1969, Broadside: photo offset and screenprint (recto and verso) Sheet: 86.4 x 55.9 cm (34 x 22 in.)
This is the Edition the Yale University Novum Organum, No. 7: Special “Colossal Monument” Issue focusing on recent gift of Claes Oldenburg’s “Lipstick Ascending on Caterpillar Tracks”
This historic Yale University student publication is so scarce - the only other copy we've ever seen is at the Yale University Art Gallery's archives -- donated by the very architecture student who instigated the whole installation!
A piece of Pop Art and Anti-War history.
RARE
Bibliography:
Yale University Art Gallery Archives
Tate Gallery (online)
Oldenburg: Works in Edition (1971)
- Creator:Claes Oldenburg (1929, American, Swedish)
- Creation Year:1969
- Dimensions:Height: 34 in (86.36 cm)Width: 24 in (60.96 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:New York, NY
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU1745211775732
Claes Oldenburg
One of the original Pop artists, Claes Oldenburg was born in Stockholm. The son of a Swedish diplomat, he spent his early years in Stockholm and Oslo until the family moved to Chicago in 1937.
Oldenburg attended Yale University, then returned to Chicago, where he worked for a newspaper and also attended drawing classes at the Art Institute. He moved to New York in 1956.
Oldenburg’s early art in New York were works of urban realism in cardboard and paper that were influenced by the work of Dubuffet and the New Realists, and were seen as a brutal response to society. In 1961 Oldenburg rented a storefront on the Lower East Side and sold brightly painted plaster objects as well as three-dimensional and wall reliefs based on hamburgers, pastries, men's and women's clothing, and other commodities. The signature soft sculptures followed, objects of commonplace household objects made of vinyl or canvas stuffed with kapok. These pieces transformed the medium — the soft sculptures are intended to be sensual experiences and commentary on our material world of objects and our relationship to them.
In 1965, still working in vinyl, plaster and cardboard, Oldenburg began making large works termed “Colossal Monuments,” which are large public sculptures with public and private meanings. In the 1970s, Oldenburg was fabricating large-scale works in durable materials such as steel, and working with Coosje van Bruggen, he had received many such public commissions in the United States and Europe.
Find authentic Claes Oldenburg sculptures, prints and other art on 1stDibs.
(Biography provided by Art Commerce)
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