Willard Park was a green area adjacent to City Hall with some trees, a small fountain, and a modest memorial to the city’s firefighters (fig. 6).14 The park was named after Archibald M. Willard (1836–1918), the painter of the famous Spirit of ’76. Known through many variants, a version of the original painting of 1876 was requested in 1912 by Mayor Newton D. Baker for city hall, where it is still on display in the rotunda (fig. 7).15 Not only were some members of city council against the site, but the sculptors also had reservations about a new location.
Figure 6 William Ward, Firefighters’ Monument, 1965, marble. Willard Park, Cleveland, Ohio. Photo by author
In April 1986, George Dunn solicited help from Evan H. Turner, who had succeeded Sherman Lee as director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, and Tom Hinson, curator of modern art, for the support of the art museum in arranging a new location. Dunn indicated his intention to notify Schewel and Lippincott, the sculptors’ attorney and contractor, respectively, of BP’s denial of the original siting.16 McCullough wrote Horton in June to reiterate that the Fine Arts Committee wanted the sculpture to remain in Cleveland.17 He again offered to help find a new location, and even volunteered to aid in convincing the sculptors of the suitability of a new placement, backing away from his earlier support of the work as site specific. In his response to McCullough, Horton, jockeying for an alternative location, conceded that “our city deserves a major work by an internationally celebrated contemporary sculptor” (as long as that “major work” was not situated at BP’s doorstep).18 He noted Voinovich’s suggestion of Willard Park, and volunteered that BP would pay for the installation.
Figure 7 Archibald M. Willard, Spirit of ’76, 1912. City Hall, Cleveland, Ohio. Photo by author
Evan Turner had earlier cautioned Horton that it was necessary to keep the attitudes of the sculptors in mind if any resolution of a new setting for the sculpture was to be had.19 He suggested the plaza west of City Hall as a possible site, or the plaza at Marshall Fredericks’ peace memorial. That August, Dunn wrote to Tom Hinson stating that if “left with the unilateral decision as to relocation and elect to go ahead on that basis, we would like comfort that the museum would assist us in carrying out that effort.”20
Figure 8 Claes Oldenburg, sketch for hand stamp sculpture, 1988. Photo by author. Courtesy of the Oldenburg van Bruggen Studio
On September 3, 1986, the sculptors, accompanied by their contractor, Lippincott, again visited Cleveland to consider the suggested new settings for the sculpture.21 Sites proposed included the football stadium; Willard Park, as first suggested by Mayor Voinovich in June; the corner of Ontario and St. Clair at the Justice Center; the Warehouse District, the campus of Cleveland State University; and Euclid at Huron on Playhouse Square. Three days later, Horton enthused to Turner, “I must say that on its side in Willard Park appeals to me. That way the ‘FREE’ could be seen and the image of a straight up-and-down ‘Rubber Stamp’ be substantially reduced. I believe that it is important that Cleveland receive this important work without thinking—however misguidedly—that the artist is poking fun at the city.”22 Horton was repeating the sculptors’ suggestion of a tilted placement for the sculpture, and with a new location it was apparently no longer sarcastic. A quick sketch from notes made by Oldenburg during the visit depicts the sculpture displaced from its pad at the right (fig. 8), and on the left, at van Bruggen’s suggestion, a sculpture on its side.
2
THE ARTISTS
God sometimes grants unto a man to learn and know how to make a thing the like whereof, in his day, no other can conceive it; and perhaps not for a time before and after him does another soon come.
—Albrecht Dürer, Letters
Claes Oldenburg was born January 28, 1929, in Stockholm, Sweden. The family lived in New York and Oslo, Norway, before settling in Chicago in 1936, where his father served as consul general for Sweden.1 Oldenburg entered Yale University in 1946 with an interest in literature. He returned to Chicago on graduation to work as an apprentice reporter at the City News Bureau while pursuing further studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Oldenburg became an American citizen in 1953. Three years later he moved to New York City, where the downtown Judson and Reuben galleries became the base for his exhibitions of sculptures made of cardboard, wire, and paper, exhibited as The Street (1960). In 1961 he rented a storefront, which he called “The Store,” where he made colorful commercial goods out of painted plaster. He also used The Store for a series of performances called Ray Gun Theater, in which his artist-wife, Patty Muschinski (now Mucha), participated. She later assisted in the sewing of his soft sculptures. Their ten-year marriage ended in 1970.
Coosje van Bruggen was born in Groningen, the Netherlands, in 1942, the daughter of a physician. After completing her Doctorandus degree in art history at the University of Groningen, she joined the curatorial staff of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, where she met Oldenburg in January 1970 at the installation of a traveling retrospective of his work.
Their next encounter revolved around one of Oldenburg’s first large-scale sculptures, the 41-foot-high Trowel I, sited in the Sonsbeek exhibition in Arnheim in 1971. Following the exhibition, Trowel I was placed in park grounds near the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo. Oldenburg and van Bruggen corresponded about the iconography of Trowel I and from time to time in the years that followed discussed its site and appearance. In September 1975 the sculptors met in Otterlo to inspect the work, which had greatly deteriorated in the intervening years. R. W. D. Oxenaar, the director of the museum, agreed to have the work remade and resited. Van Bruggen the critic/art historian became sculptor/collaborator when she disapproved of its silvery surface and suggested instead a blue hue based on the color of Dutch workmen’s overalls. Trowel I was taken down and rebuilt, painted the blue that van Bruggen selected, and resited in a space she chose in the Otterlo sculpture park. It became the couple’s first collaboration (fig. 9).
Figure 9 Coosje van Bruggen and Claes Oldenburg at “Spirit of the Monument” symposium, 1992, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. Image STP 03307, property of Case Western Reserve University Archives
In 1976 van Bruggen made her first trip to the United States for the installation of Oldenburg’s first large-scale monument, the 45-foot Clothespin facing City Hall in downtown Philadelphia. During her visit she accompanied Oldenburg to the Lippincott Factory in North Haven, Connecticut, to see Batcolumn under construction. While there, she defined a gray color for the sculpture.
Requirements