© Claes Oldenburg / Coosje van Bruggen
Currently not on view
Three Hats,
1974
Claes Oldenburg, 1929–2022; born Stockholm, Sweden; died New York, NY; active New York
Printed by Adolf Rischner at Styria Studio, Inc.
Printed by Adolf Rischner at Styria Studio, Inc.
x1977-140
"I am for an art that takes its form from the lines of life itself," Oldenburg wrote in his manifesto on art in 1961, setting the strategy for a multimedia practice that includes performance, drawing, painting, printmaking, and, most famously, sculptures of quotidian objects. In all cases, Oldenburg aims to eliminate the divide between the rarefied and the everyday object, between the art environment and the life of the street. To this end, his work imbues inanimate objects with an expressive physicality and energy. This quality can be seen in Three Hats, in which a bowler hat is animated through its sequential reappearance, as if it is moving through the street of its own accord.
Information
Title
Three Hats
Dates
1974
Maker
Medium
Color lithograph on Twinrocker handmade rag paper
Dimensions
89.6 × 58.7 cm (35 1/4 × 23 1/8 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of The Albert List Family Collection
Object Number
x1977-140
Place Made
North America, United States, New York, New York
Inscription
Numbered in graphite, bottom left: 47//100
Dated in graphite, bottom right: © 1974
Initialed in graphite, bottom center: CO
Marks/Labels/Seals
Styria Studio blindstamp, bottom right
Stamped on verso in black ink, bottom right: COPYRIGHT 1974 / BY CLAES OLDENBURG
Reference Numbers
Axsom and Platzker 115
Culture
Type
Materials
Techniques
- "Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1977," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 37, no. 1 (1978): p. 28-40., p. 40
- Richard H. Axsom and David Platzker, Printed stuff : prints, posters, and ephemera by Claes Oldenburg: a catalogue raisonné 1958-1996 (New York: Hudson Hill Press in association with Madison Art Center, Wisconsin, 1997). , no. 115
- Johanna Burton et al., Pop art: contemporary perspectives, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum; New Haven, CT: distributed by Yale University Press, 2007), p. 143 (color illus.)
