#oldenburg

I couldn't find why Oldenburg picked pool balls specifically for this one — if anyone knows, I'd love the story. What I did find is that blowing ordinary objects up to monument size was basically his whole practice for decades, one of the things credited with helping Pop art move off the canvas and into public parks.

Oldenburg spent decades blowing up small household objects into oversized public sculptures, and from what I can find, a lot of the later ones were worked out with his wife and collaborator, Coosje van Bruggen. This is one of their bathroom-themed sculptures — from a run of work that helped push Pop art off the canvas and into actual parks and plazas.