Cleas Oldenburg has been an innovate American artist for more than four decades, from early performance pieces and environmental installations including The Street and The Store, through recent monumental public sculptures created in collaboration with Coosje van Bruggen. His work combines unequaled skill as a manipulator of materials, traditional and innovative; unique brilliance as a draftsman; and unlimited imagination and wit devoted to inventing sculptural form.
Oldenburg's career as a sculptor has been paralleled by a major graphic oeuvre, some 250 editioned prints as well as posters, artist's books, and much printed ephemera. These works have involved a variety of printing processes, from mimeograph to lithography, etching, woodcut, and screenprinting, and have been printed on ordinary and special papers, Plexiglas, cardboard, silk, and canvas.
All of Oldenburg s prints, posters, and printed ephemera are fully documented in the newest in Hudson Hills Press's acclaimed series of catalogue raisonnés of the graphic work of America s greatest printmakers. All works that involve color are reproduced in full color, the balance in rich duotone. Many are accompanied by reproductions of related drawings.
Printed Stuff includes an essay by Richard H. Axsom titled "Beyond a Laugh and a Pretty Line " a comprehensive study of Oldenburg's printed oeuvre and its relation to his large-scale projects and especially his drawings. Oldenburg himself has stated, "The problem has always been how to make the print statements as personal as the drawing statements " Axsom writes, Oldenburg's "printed work has provided him with an alternative and significant playing field for drawing, metamorphic form, and self-documentation." Axsom was Professor of Art History at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and author of catalogue raisonnés of the prints of Ellsworth Kelly and Frank Stella.
David Platzker, who authored the Oldenburg catalogue raisonné, is an independent curator as well as curator for Oldenburg and van Bruggen; he has coordinated numerous exhibitions and publications on Oldenburg and other artists.
Printed Stuff includes a list of Selected Exhibition History, Bibliographic References, Concordance, and Index.
