Lot Essay
Oldenburg's series devoted to "The Home," of which Soft Bathtub is a part, began with the Bedroom Ensemble constructed in Los Angeles in late 1963. Although he abandoned the project due to technical problems, he took it up again while reviewing his notes prior to his 1966 exhibition at Sidney Janis Gallery, resolving the difficulties he had encountered by making and painting the canvas version of the subject almost as a study for the final version. It was then that Oldenburg continued to make pieces related to "The Home" in "hard," "soft" and "ghost" versions, and in sizes ranging from actual to oversize.
The artist's intention with this series was to make sculptures that juxtaposed the sense of the everyday and the material with an erotic fantasy which he had already acknowledged as being one of the principal motivations of his art. The subject of "The Home" focused on two rooms in particular, first the bedroom and second the bathroom. The bedroom was absurd in that it was geometric, abstract and rational, the opposite of the qualities normally associated therewith; Oldenburg said, "The effect was intensified by choosing the softest room in the house and the one least associated with conscious thought" (quoted in G. Celant, op. cit, p. 204). "The Bathroom," which was to consist of three pieces, the Toilet, Washstand and Bathtub, had the opposite absurdity; the objects were hard and mechanical in reality and would become soft and anthropomorphic when sculpted. Oldenburg had written in 1965, "The distinction in technology I am told is software/hardware. A softening is not a blurring, like the effect of atmosphere on hard forms, but in fact a softening, in a strong, clear light. The perception one might say of mechanical nature as body" (quoted in B. Rose, Claes Oldenburg, New York, 1970, p. 100).
The effect is to emphasize the handcrafted and sensual quality of the work, its extraordinary eroticism magnified in the translation from shiny porcelain. He worked concurrently on his Airflow automobile sculptures and the eroticism associated with the automobile has been transferred in these sculptures to immobile bathroom fixtures.
Jost Herbig bought the present work from the Heiner Friedrich Gallery in Cologne, as it fitted perfectly with Herbig's growing collection of American avant-garde art and work of important emerging German artists. Michael Werner, then a young dealer, recalls expressing his enormous desire for the work to Herbig, who was willing to wager the sculpture on the outcome of a four hundred meter race between them. Herbig won and the sculpture remained in his collection from where it was loaned to the Neue Galerie in Kassel between 1973 and 1997.
The present work was made in three versions. The "hard" version is in the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, and the "soft" version was destroyed by fire.
The artist's intention with this series was to make sculptures that juxtaposed the sense of the everyday and the material with an erotic fantasy which he had already acknowledged as being one of the principal motivations of his art. The subject of "The Home" focused on two rooms in particular, first the bedroom and second the bathroom. The bedroom was absurd in that it was geometric, abstract and rational, the opposite of the qualities normally associated therewith; Oldenburg said, "The effect was intensified by choosing the softest room in the house and the one least associated with conscious thought" (quoted in G. Celant, op. cit, p. 204). "The Bathroom," which was to consist of three pieces, the Toilet, Washstand and Bathtub, had the opposite absurdity; the objects were hard and mechanical in reality and would become soft and anthropomorphic when sculpted. Oldenburg had written in 1965, "The distinction in technology I am told is software/hardware. A softening is not a blurring, like the effect of atmosphere on hard forms, but in fact a softening, in a strong, clear light. The perception one might say of mechanical nature as body" (quoted in B. Rose, Claes Oldenburg, New York, 1970, p. 100).
The effect is to emphasize the handcrafted and sensual quality of the work, its extraordinary eroticism magnified in the translation from shiny porcelain. He worked concurrently on his Airflow automobile sculptures and the eroticism associated with the automobile has been transferred in these sculptures to immobile bathroom fixtures.
Jost Herbig bought the present work from the Heiner Friedrich Gallery in Cologne, as it fitted perfectly with Herbig's growing collection of American avant-garde art and work of important emerging German artists. Michael Werner, then a young dealer, recalls expressing his enormous desire for the work to Herbig, who was willing to wager the sculpture on the outcome of a four hundred meter race between them. Herbig won and the sculpture remained in his collection from where it was loaned to the Neue Galerie in Kassel between 1973 and 1997.
The present work was made in three versions. The "hard" version is in the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, and the "soft" version was destroyed by fire.