Oldenburg has based his career on quoting elements from consumer culture, whether through handmade replicas of mass-produced items or through monumental sculptures. Clearly he was taking aim at common objects when he stated, “My intention is to make an everyday object that eludes definition.”
Giant Soft Ketchup Bottle with Ketchup is an Oldenburg fabric sculpture that takes a mundane household item and re-creates it in malleable form. The fabric’s folds reveal the tactile and sensuous side of a normally cold glass bottle.
Not only does Oldenburg disorient the viewer with a larger-than-life ketchup bottle, but he also makes a mess with it. Uncapped and turned upside down, Giant Soft Ketchup Bottle with Ketchup loses its contents onto the floor in a soft mass.
Details
- Artist Name: Claes Oldenburg (American, 1929-2022)
- Title: Giant Soft Ketchup Bottle with Ketchup
- Date: 1966-67
- Medium: Painted canvas filled with polyurethane foam
- Dimensions: 100 x 52 x 40 in. (254 x 132.1 x 101.6 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Museum, Museum Purchase with funds granted by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pasadena Art Alliance
- Accession Number: P.1969.002
- Copyright: © 2008 Claes Oldenburg
Object Information
Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, 1969-1975;
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, 1975.
3 Pop Artists
- University of California, Riverside, 1972-02-01 to 1972-02-27
A Look at New York
- Pasadena Museum of Modern Art, 1973-06-12 to 1973-07-22
[on loan]
- Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, 1981-02-05 to 1983-02-28
Claes Oldenburg: Works on Loan
- Pasadena Art Museum, 1970-12-10 to 1971-02-28
Claes Oldenburg: An Anthology
- National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), 1995-02-12 to 1995-05-07
- Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, Calif.), 1995-07-08 to 1995-09-03
- Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1995-10-07 to 1996-01-14
- Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 1996-02-15 to 1996-05-12
- Hayward Gallery, 1996-06-06 to 1996-08-19
1968 Annual Exhibition Contemporary American Sculpture
- Whitney Museum of American Art, 1968-12-17 to 1969-02-09
A New View: The Architect's Eye
- Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, 1993-11-21 to 1994-03-06
Works from the Pasadena Art Museum
- Vancouver Art Gallery, 1970-04-14 to 1970-05-10
Permanent and Loan Collection, 1973
- Pasadena Museum of Modern Art, 1973-01-30 to 1973-12-31
Recent Acquisitions, 1969
- Pasadena Art Museum, 1969-11-24 to 1970-01-18
Made in America: Contemporary Painting and Sculpture from the Norton Simon Museum
- Norton Simon Museum, 1999-06-24 to 2000-03-26
46 N. Los Robles: A History of The Pasadena Art Museum
- USC Pacific Asia Museum, 2011-11-17 to 2012-04-08
Duchamp to Pop
- Norton Simon Museum, 2016-03-04 to 2016-08-29
R. A. Herold Wing Dedication Exhibition
- Sacramento, E. B. Crocker Art Gallery, 1969-11-19 to 1969-12-31
American Art of the 1950s and 1960s from the Collection of the Norton Simon Museum
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1988-08-11 to 1994-04-03
Permanent and Loan Collection, 1974
- Pasadena Museum of Modern Art, 1974-03-16 to 1974-06-06
Pop Culture!
- Norton Simon Museum, 2001-11-16 to 2002-02-11
Radical Past: Contemporary Art and Music in Pasadena, 1960-1974
- Norton Simon Museum, 1999-02-07 to 1999-06-06
- Armory Center for the Arts, 1999-02-07 to 1999-04-11
- Art Center College of Design (Pasadena, Calif.), 1999-02-07 to 1999-04-25
Significant Objects: The Spell of Still Life
- Norton Simon Museum, 2012-07-20 to 2013-01-21
- Pasadena Art Museum, Recent Acquisitions 1969, no. 38 p. 26
- Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art/National Gallery of Art, Claes Oldenburg: An Anthology, 1995, no. 135 p. 241
- Armory Center for the Arts/Art Center College of Design, Radical Past: Contemporary Art & Music in Pasadena, 1960-1974, 1999, p. 85
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