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With "Cupid's Span," the monumental new outdoor sculpture =
by
Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, San Francisco may have begun to rev=
erse
its embarrassing record on choices of art in public places.
The 60-foot-high painted fiberglass and stainless-steel sculpture
represents a bow and arrow -- traditional attributes of the imp of love=
--
shooting straight down into a sliver of pedestrian park that borders the
Embarcadero, opposite the end of Folsom Street.
"These urban pieces are treated like something that's hit the
city," Oldenburg told The Chronic=
le in
a conference call with van Bruggen from their New York studio. Together they have
produced about 40 such projects around the world.
"At first there's the man-in-the-street opinion," Oldenburg said,
"but then there's the more nuanced response. We don't copy the obj=
ects
we use, we try to transform them and we hope they go on transforming as=
you
look at them. The idea of endless public dialogue -- visual dialogue --=
is
very important to us."
Born in Sweden =
and a
resident of the United States
since childhood, Oldenburg=
,
73, is renowned as a pioneer of Pop Art and Happenings. His early
sculptures -- hard things, such as a toilet and a drum set, made soft, =
and
small things, such as a hamburger and an eraser, made large -- won him =
an
immediate following in and beyond the art world. His masterly drawings
envisioned common objects blown up to architectural scale. Eventually he
began to realize some of these ideas as artworks for public settings. <=
/p>
The Dutch-born van Bruggen, 60, trained as an art historian and was
curator of a number of important international exhibitions, beginning in
the 1970s. She is the author of monographs on Bruce Nauman, John Baldas=
sari
and Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.
She and Oldenburg were married in 1977, soon after they began collabora=
ting
on large-scale sculpture projects.
As collaborators, they seek the same sense of slowly unfolding surpr=
ise
that marked much of Oldenb=
urg's
early work.
CHANGING VIEWS
Observant passers-by will notice how "Cupid's Span" changes
aspect with viewing angle and distance.
Up close, its taut bowstring and vertical arrow relate to the cables=
and
towers of the Bay
Bridge.
From a moderate distance, the bow, arrow and string suggest the hull,
mast and rigging of a Spanish galleon -- the vessel of the colonizers -=
- a
reading countered by the identification of bow and arrow with Native
Americans -- the colonized. One double reading of "bow," of
course, is as the bow, or front end,
of a ship.
Viewed from farther off, across the Embarcadero, the curves of Cupid=
's
bow dovetail with the arching fronds of the palms that line the causeway
and implicitly also with the swoop of the road itself.
Even the title of the piece changes when pondered. The mind's ear can
barely distinguish "Cupid's Span" from "Cupid's Pan"=
;:
The cherub who impales hearts might turn out to be the lazy, lubricious
nature spirit who will impale any warm body within reach.
Oldenburg and van Bruggen have been collaborating on public projects=
for
25 years.
"Our first piece was the 'Trowel' (in Otterlo, Nether=
lands)
in 1976, then the 'Bat Column' in Chicago,"
Oldenburg
said.
The first work they signed together was the giant "Flashlight&q=
uot;
standing on end at the University
of Nevada, Las Vegas.
"Before that," van Bruggen said, "Claes would ask me =
what
I was thinking and I might suggest a few changes. But with the
'Flashlight,' the whole sculpture changed at my prompting. That was whe=
n we
decided either to work together or I would stop commenting."
"We are opposites who try to work in union," she said.
"There are occasions when one of us says 'no,' and we have a pact =
that
if one of us refuses something, we don't go forward. We have worked with
two fabricators for a very long time. So the technical side has evolved
slowly, and now we have such a strong team that basically there are no
disappointments in the translation of a piece to finished scale." =
For artists working in public settings, Oldenburg and van Bruggen ha=
ve a
startling record of critical and popular successes. How do they explain=
it?
'PRIVATE ART IN A =
PUBLIC
PLACE'
"I don't think the term 'public art' is right," van Bruggen
said. "We always speak of private art in a public place. You find =
the
same diversity and range of taste -- and bad taste -- in an outdoor
environment as anywhere else. Probably you have more in a city because =
you
have a lot more watering-down, what with committees and permissions and
neighborhood groups and so forth. In the end, art is something that can=
not
be confirmed by everybody."
"If you're an architect, you have to make changes to suit your
client," Oldenburg
said, "but we present a finished project."
"And we definitely don't compromise," van Bruggen added. <=
/p>
They have ways of avoiding the common pitfalls of commissioned artwo=
rks.
"We have a structured contract that people either agree to or
not," Oldenburg
said. "What can happen, though, is that a city changes with time a=
nd
there's nothing you can do. In Chicago,
the city just grew up around the 'Bat Column,' yet I think the piece has
kept pace with it."
Van Bruggen disagreed: "The little gates and flowerpots and thi=
ngs
that came up near the sculpture just don't work. But in San Francisco we've been very fortu=
nate
to have such a good team to work with."
"Cupid's Span" fits the pattern of their collaborative
projects in many respects. A gift to the city from Donald and Doris Fis=
her,
founders of the Gap,
"Cupid's Span" took more than three years to realize.
As Oldenburg
has envisioned small things magnified to architectural scale in his
drawings since the early '60s, I wondered whether his civic-scale proje=
cts
typically began on paper.
"It doesn't really start with a drawing, but with words," =
he
said. "We know we have a commission. We go to the site and look at=
it
and think about its cultural qualities and see if there's something that
stirs our imagination. In =
San
Francisco, it was the park with the bridge, the
ships and sailboats passing. Immediately you have a sort of physical id=
ea
of what would work for this view."
Together they decided that the Embarcadero piece could not block the
view, yet somehow had to frame the view as well.
"All the characteristics of the site sort of coalesce into an
image, and that's the starting point," Oldenburg said. "Coosje was th=
inking
about the opera and symphony, and we've been working on some musical
instruments lately, so that got us to the bow."
THE CUPID CONNECTION
They were also working on a commission from the National Gallery in =
London to res=
pond to
a famous work in its collection, "The Music Lesson" by Johann=
es
Vermeer. Van Bruggen noticed the painting of Cupid with his archer's bo=
w in
the background of Vermeer's picture.
"It's that jump of associations combined with the site that cre=
ates
the image," she said of the process by which she and Oldenburg arr=
ived
at "Cupid's Span."
"Once you have the image, a very important consideration is
scale," Oldenburg
said, "as well as the position of the object. There's a certain sk=
ill
you need to make art on this scale."
The prominence of Oldenburg and van Bruggen's outdoor work raises the
question whether some social ideal lies behind what they do.
"Just the fact that you can put up something beautiful and comp=
lex
in a city is a social statement in itself," =
Oldenburg said.
"We believe what we do is a clear, humane statement," van
Bruggen added. "We are pleased to work in the imperfect human
situation and come up with a humane sign. As our friend Frank Gehry says
about architecture, 'Every time you do something, you're just adding to=
a
work in progress.' "
E-mail Kenneth Baker at kennethbaker@sfchronicle.com.
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