By Steven Litt, The Plain
Dealer
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Pop Art
master Claes Oldenburg famously said in 1961, "I am for an art that is
political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on it's a-- in
a museum."
On Wednesday, Oldenburg used
more polite terms to describe his monumental "Free Stamp" sculpture,
designed in collaboration with his late wife, Coosje van Bruggen, as an
embodiment of his pugnacious philosophy of public art.
"You become part of the
city, and that is what we wanted," he said during an interview at the
Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland. "We wanted art to become part of the
city and not something specialized that sits in a museum."
Oldenburg's official reason for
visiting Cleveland from Saturday to Wednesday was to pick up an honorary doctor
of humane letters degree at the Case Western Reserve University commencement on
Sunday.
"Wow, that was a big deal,
so many people," he said. "And so much clapping!"
But the trip from New York was
also a good excuse for the 85-year-old artist -- who uses a cane and a
wheelchair to get around -- to revisit his works scattered in museum
collections around the region, including the Cleveland Museum of Art and the
Allen Memorial Art Museum in Oberlin, and to revisit "Free Stamp,"
now undergoing a round of maintenance and repair.
Oldenburg said he also wanted
to see Lakeview Cemetery and the Peter B. Lewis Building at CWRU, designed by
Frank Gehry.
"It's been a crowded few
days," he said.
"Free Stamp" was
originally commissioned by Sohio to sit on a pedestal at the foot of the
company's skyscraper on Public Square, opposite the Soldiers and Sailors
Monument.
BP America caused an uproar in
1986 when it took over Sohio and rejected the sculpture for undisclosed
reasons.
"Free Stamp" was one
of 44 monumental sculptures designed by Oldenburg and van Bruggen, and
installed in cities around the world.
All are inspired by commonplace
objects blown up to gargantuan scale: A set of giant shuttlecocks on the lawn
in front of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri; a giant
umbrella in downtown Des Moines, Iowa; a bent spoon with a cherry on the
grounds of the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis.
Despite their humble
inspirations and playful aura, Oldenburg and van Bruggen's public sculptures
often conveyed political, social and sexual associations.
Perhaps for that reason, BP let
"Free Stamp" sit for five years at the Illinois factory where it was
fabricated, until the city of Cleveland agreed to place it at Willard Park,
next to City Hall.
BP America never stated why it
didn't want the sculpture, saying only that it was "inappropriate,"
according to Cleveland art historian and CWRU professor emeritus Ed Olszewski,
who reviewed company documents for a book on "Free Stamp," and who
coordinated Oldenburg's visit to Cleveland.
Olszewski said the bland
language used by BP in reference to the sculpture was intended to avoid a
lawsuit over breach of contract with the artist.
"It was difficult,"
Oldenburg said, looking back on the furor. "We stuck by our rules, and we
just waited it out. Lots of people came to the rescue and spoke in favor of the
sculpture."
Eventually, Oldenburg said he
and van Bruggen allowed the work to be installed at Willard Park.
Instead of placing the gigantic
rubber stamp upright on a pedestal, as originally intended, he said they wanted
it placed on a diagonal so the handle would appear partially buried in the
earth, as if BP had heaved the sculpture several blocks north of Public Square in
disgust.
"We thought of the idea of
picking it up and throwing it, and we were able to get this great site at City
Hall, and it [looked as if] it landed on its side, and that made it far more
interesting," Oldenburg said. "It made it an active work."
The diagonal placement made it
possible to read the raised letters "F-R-E-E'' emblazoned in pink on the
bottom of the stamp. Oldenburg said he and van Bruggen chose pink as the color
to evoke the idea of a fresh rubber stamp that had not yet been inked.
Oldenburg said the idea of a
giant rubber stamp was inspired by the form of the 1894 Soldiers and Sailors
Monument, which features a slender, triumphal column rising out of a blocky,
Romanesque-revival building.
Oldenburg and van Bruggen chose
the word "FREE" not because they wanted to evoke the Civil War
struggle to eradicate slavery, but simply because they wanted to play with a
word that has enormous resonance in America.
"Free related to
everything that you want to have for free," he said. "It's the idea of
freedom in general. It has a lot of meanings. It's very open-ended. It doesn't
mean anything. It's everything you can attach 'free' to in your
experience."
Despite the fraught history of
the sculpture and its relationship to BP, Oldenburg said he was very pleased
that the company is paying $96,000 to have the sculpture maintained in a
project led by the nonprofit ICA Art Conservation of Cleveland. The work is to
last about a month.
"I'm not an expert in
maintenance myself, but I could see that they're going to do a very thorough
job," he said.
Oldenburg once proposed
creating a giant edition of The Plain Dealer that would have been stuck to the
top of the lakefront skyscraper designed by Gehry for Peter Lewis as the
downtown headquarters of Progressive Corp., but the project never got off the
ground.
Oldenburg said the fracas over
"Free Stamp" was not his first rejection over visual content and
symbolism in Cleveland.
He said the state of Ohio
rejected a proposal of his to create a large-scale arch in the shape of a bent
screw in front of the Frank J. Lausche State Office Building.
"It was rejected because
of its connotations," he said, alluding to the idea of a limp phallus in
front of a government building.
Then again, Oldenburg said, it
probably would have been too tricky for state officials to use the sculpture as
a rendezvous point by saying, "I'll meet you at the screw."