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IN 1906, J.V. McNICHOLAS PULLED HIS HORSE- drawn wagon up to the railroad tracks along the banks of the Mahoning River for the first time. He must have wondered what the future would bring.
After all, he had just left his job at the steel mill, b...
AKRON, OH – MidWest Fine Arts recently completed the moving and installation of the Claes Oldenburg piece “Soft Inverted Q”. Soft Inverted Q is a life-size painted concrete and resin sculpture weighing about 3 1/2 tons and measuring 72 inches high, 70 inches wide and 63 inches deep. The “Q” was at ICA in Cleveland for conservation work while construction in Akron was going on. It is typical of Oldenburg's approach of selecting a recognizable symbol or object, removing it from its original condition and context, and imbuing it with new meaning through unexpected juxtapositions of scale, color, texture, and environment. Art Handlers Andy and Keith Rock directed the placement of the piece in the new wing of the Akron Art Museum in collaboration with museum staff and Registrar Arnie Tunstall.
In Oldenburg's work small becomes large, hard becomes soft, and the familiar and obvious become extraordinary. Oldenburg, who was born in Sweden in 1929, is best known as one of the proponents of the American Pop Art movement in the 1960s. The idea for Soft Inverted Q began in the late 1950s when typography was an integral part of the posters that Oldenburg created to advertise his own exhibitions. On a visit to Los Angeles in 1963, Oldenburg became conscious of the colossal letters (i.e., "Hollywood") that were such an important part of the myth of the city. The idea of monumental letters in the landscape was explored by Oldenburg in a portfolio of lithographs he produced with the fine-art publisher Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles in 1968. During the next decade, Oldenburg further experimented with the idea of the colossal alphabet in the landscape in numerous drawings and prints. Eventually, as he worked with the symbol Q, it became apparent that the letter needed to be inverted to maintain its identity. As Oldenburg said, "an inverted position seemed necessary because a Q with its tail buried wouldn't be a Q at all."
In the 1970s Oldenburg gradually transformed the Q from a symbol associated with the alphabet to an object of sensuous contours. In the process he added the figural reference to the navel and painted the sculpture pink, enhancing its allusion to the body. Soft Inverted Q is the first major work by Oldenburg to feature human anatomy while transforming its initial character and retaining its inherent and fundamental form. This piece is one of four casts of the subject.
St. Louis, Missouri - MidWest F.A.S.T team van operators and fine art moving specialists Kirk Lanning and Shawn Marcum recently transported a collection of large-scale paintings by LA-based artist Thaddeus Strode from the international air freight ...
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