Patty with Cloud

Claes Oldenburg, perhaps more than any other artist in the late twentieth century, redefined the terms of sculpture through enormous reproductions of commercial and quotidian objects that are at once whimsical, irreverent, and absurd. He moved to New York after college in 1956 and quickly became a prominent figure in Happenings and performance art, but his plaster sculptures shown in 1961 at The Store, a display in his studio that parodied American consumerism, launched him to fame as a leading artist associated with the emergent Pop movement. In 1957 Oldenburg produced his first "soft" sculptures using canvas or vinyl filled with foam. These were collaborations with his first wife Patty Mucha, who sewed the works from Oldenburg’s templates. Since then, soft sculptures became a staple of his practice, even as he turned to outdoor sculptures in the 1970s as his primary output.

Here, Oldenburg represents Patty in a voluminous ballgown with a giant pink cloud hanging overhead. Oldenburg and Mucha were married from 1960 to 1970, and the artist began depicting her in oils and works on paper from the late 1950s. Not just a muse, she worked alongside Oldenburg and became a key participant in Happenings, performances, and experimental films of the era. This sheet serves not only to celebrate Mucha, but to mark a period in Oldenburg’s career when nudes and portraits, rather than objects, were central to his practice.