Fire Plug Souvenir - "Chicago August 1968"

Oldenburg's politically motivated Fire Plug Souvenir - 'Chicago August 1968' demonstrates the democratic ideals that were manifest in Pop Art of the 1960's. The Richard Feigen Gallery of Chicago asked Oldenburg to contribute a multiple to be sold at their exhibition aimed to raise funds for the ACLU in October of 1968. The previous August, the ACLU had handled the case of those arrested for protesting Mayor Richard J. Daley's brutal response to demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention. The fireplugs were of the scale of a cobblestone, which Oldenburg related to revolutionary activity. Although the multiples took on a diminutive scale, he maintained the hard materiality that one associates with a functioning fire plug by using cast plaster and acrylic paint. However, he adjusted the geometry of form and redefined the lines of his fireplug so that it resembled a stuffed animal. The confusion of form, function, material, and scale redefine the commodity of an object.