93 Quotes by Claes Oldenburg

  • Author Claes Oldenburg
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    If I didn't think what I was doing had something to do with enlarging the boundaries of art, I wouldn't go on doing it.

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  • Author Claes Oldenburg
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    The main reason for the colossal objects is the obvious one, to expand and intensify the presence of the vessel - the object.

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  • Author Claes Oldenburg
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    I knew I wasn't that good a writer, and all I could remember was that I could draw. I'm better at drawing than I am at writing.

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  • Author Claes Oldenburg
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    I am preoccupied with the possibility of creating art which functions in a public situation without compromising its private character of being antiheroic, antimonumental, antiabstract, and antigeneral. The paradox is intensified by the use on a grand scale of small-scale subjects known from intimate situations--an approach which tends in turn to reduce the scale of the real landscape to imaginary dimensions.

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  • Author Claes Oldenburg
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    I am for an art that tells you the time of day, or where such and such a street is. I am for an art that helps old ladies across the street.

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  • Author Claes Oldenburg
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    Art is a technique of communication. The image is the most complete technique of all communication.

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  • Author Claes Oldenburg
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    I am an immigrant in a sense. What happened was that my father was stationed in New York when my mother became pregnant, and she said, "I've got to go to Sweden so this child can be born there, because you don't have any idea where you're going to be transferred next."

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