Oldenburg (Claes) and Coosje van Bruggen papers, 1920s-2019

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Summary

Title:
Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen papers
Dates:
1920s-2019
Creators:
Oldenburg, Claes, 1929-2022 and Bruggen, Coosje van
Abstract:
This collection documents the careers of Swedish-American Pop-art sculptor Claes Oldenburg and Dutch art historian Coosje van Bruggen. The collection materials include drawings, juvenilia, ephemera, notes, and diaries and other handwritten texts, including unpublished materials from the 1960s. Also included are personal and business records, correspondence, over 2,500 loose sketches and collages, and photographic and audiovisual materials. In addition to materials related to their collaborations, the papers of Coosje van Bruggen feature research materials related to her career as an art historian and curator, as well as research for her publications. Digital materials in the collection include still image files and audiovisual files relating primarily to projects, exhibitions, and performances.
Extent:
approximately 700 Linear Feet (844 Boxes, 88 Flatfiles, 1 Boxed-roll) and 1.5 Terabytes Computer media: 200 processed compact discs, approximately 250 unprocessed compact discs, 240 unprocessed digital videodiscs, 2 unprocessed Zip disks, approximately 86 unprocessed floppy disks (estimate 1.5 TB total)
Language:
Collection material is primarily in English, with some Dutch, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Spanish, and Swedish.
Preferred citation:

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen papers, 1920s-2019, undated, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 2020.M.4.

http://hdl.handle.net/10020/archives2020m4

Background

Scope and content:

The Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen papers cover every period of Oldenburg's career from his youth to 2019 (including unpublished materials from the 1960s), as well as Oldenburg and van Bruggen's four-decade-long collaborative artistic practice and van Bruggen's independent career as an art historian and curator. The collection comprises drawings, notes, diaries, and other handwritten texts, which collectively document over 60 years of Oldenburg's activity. It also contains extensive records related to Oldenburg and van Bruggen's numerous large-scale projects, as well as personal and business records, correspondence, over 2,500 loose sketches and collages, and photographic and audiovisual materials. Of particular note are sketchbooks and loose drawings related to "Neubern," the imaginary city Oldenburg created and depicted in drawings between 1936 and 1939. Among the many projects represented in the collection are Ray Gun Theater (1962), Store Days (1961-1962), Ironworks/Fotodeath (1961), Autobodys (1963), Moveyhouse (1965), and Il Corso del Coltello (The Course of the Knife) (1985). In addition to materials related to her collaborations with Oldenburg, the papers of Coosje van Bruggen feature important research materials related to her career as an art historian and curator. These document her work at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and her research for monographic publications on Bruce Nauman, John Baldessari, Hanne Darboven, Claes Oldenburg, and Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Digital materials in the collection include still image and audiovisual files relating primarily to projects, exhibitions, and performances.

Biographical / historical:

Claes Oldenburg was born in Stockholm, Sweden, on January 28, 1929. His father, Gösta Oldenburg, was a Swedish diplomat and as a consequence Claes spent his earliest years in the United States and Norway. In 1936, Gösta was appointed Consul General of Sweden for Chicago, Illinois, where Claes attended school and spent his formative childhood years. From 1946 to 1950, he studied literature and art history at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

Oldenburg created art throughout his entire life and was among the artists who came of age in New York City during the late 1950s and early 1960s. He had his first joint exhibition in March 1953 with American artist Robert Indiana, showcasing a series of satiric drawings inspired by writer Nelson Algren. Later that year, Oldenburg started creating his first paintings and theatrical works. He began taking sporadic art classes at the Art Institute of Chicago while working as a reporter at the City News Bureau of Chicago. Before moving to New York City in 1956, Oldenburg participated in several local exhibitions in Chicago. After arriving in New York, he worked in the library of the Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration (now known as the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum) and continued his study of art history independently.

Not long after his arrival to New York, Oldenburg's interest in theater led him to a group of environmental artists who had shifted their main artistic practice from painting to performance. Among them was Allan Kaprow, the creator of an emerging performance movement known as "happenings" in which Oldenburg would become involved. Happenings combined aspects of theater, dance, poetry, music, and the visual arts into deliberate but unrehearsed events, often involving significant audience participation. Artists Red Grooms, Robert Whitman, Lucas Samaras, George Segal, Ray Johnson, and Jim Dine were also frequently involved in happenings. Throughout the late 1950s and into the 1960s, Oldenburg continued to produce large-scale portraits, nudes, and genre scenes, many of which featured Patty Mucha (Muschinski), his spouse from 1960 to 1970. In 1959, Oldenburg was invited to join the Judson Gallery, where he had his first public solo exhibition from May through June of that year.

During the early 1960s, Oldenburg produced installation works such as The Street (1960) and The Store (1961-1964), created and participated in happenings, and centered many works around his "Ray Gun" theme. Building on his prop work in the happenings movement, he began creating "soft sculptures" that challenged the traditional forms and materials of the medium. Between 1963 and 1968, Oldenburg continued to take his theatrical and sculptural works in new directions, frequently traveling outside of New York City. In September 1963, he moved to Los Angeles for six months, his time there resulting in works such as Autobodys (1963), Bedroom Ensemble (1963), and his Airflow series of soft sculptures (1965-1966). During this period, he expanded his repertoire of soft sculptures to include foodstuffs and everyday objects.

In 1965, he turned his attention to drawings and imaginative outdoor monuments. He traveled extensively to present proposals for these "monuments", which transformed his sculptures of everyday objects into playful interventions on an architectural scale. Toward the end of the sixties and into the seventies, Oldenburg's work was largely focused on public commissions. His conceptualized monuments developed into what he came to refer to as "Large-Scale Projects." In 1976, he worked with Dutch art historian and curator Coosje van Bruggen on the installation of his work Trowel I (1971) on the grounds of the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, Netherlands. Van Bruggen and Oldenburg married in 1977 and shared credit for their projects from 1981 onward.

Coosje van Bruggen was born on June 6, 1942, in Groningen, Netherlands. She studied art history at the University of Groningen and worked at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam from 1967 to 1971. From 1971 to 1976, she taught at the Academy for Art and Industries in Enschede. She first worked with Oldenburg in 1976, sharing credit with him for their subsequent projects dating from the 1980s to the 2000s. The artists married in 1977. In addition to her work with Oldenburg, van Bruggen continued to pursue an independent career as a critic, curator, writer and lecturer. She wrote scholarly articles and books on contemporary artists and contributed articles to Artforum magazine between 1983 and 1988. From 1996 to 1997 she served as senior critic in the sculpture department at Yale University School of Art.

The couple created over forty large-scale public sculptures, primarily throughout the United States and Europe, until van Bruggen's death from cancer in 2009. Following her passing, Oldenburg continued to pursue commissions independently until his own death in 2022.

Acquisition information:
Acquired from Claes Oldenburg, 2018.
Custodial history:

Materials were created or collected by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen and remained in their possession until their transfer to the Getty Research Institute in 2019.

Processing information:

Prior to its transfer to the Getty Research Institute, the collection was arranged and inventoried by the Oldenburg and van Bruggen studio. The collection's arrangement follows the original order and categorizations outlined in the studio inventory. Existing titles were retained whenever possible.

Processing history:

The collection survey and processing plan was completed by Lauren McDaniel in 2022.

The collection was processed from 2022 to 2024 as follows:

Series I. Notebook page drawings, Series II. Clippings: Processed by Meg Suhosky. Series III. Ephemera, Series V. Business records and correspondence: Processed by Meg Suhosky, and processed by Sierra Komar and Jenny Le under the supervision of Meg Suhosky. Series VII. Juvenilia: Processed by Meg Suhosky. Series XIV. Audiovisual material: Processed by Sierra Komar under the supervision of Meg Suhosky. Series XV. Digital material: Processed by Jenny Le under the supervision of Laura Schroffel and Meg Suhosky. Further processing is required on remaining digital content.

Photographic materials throughout the collection are in generally good condition. The bulk of the photographic materials arrived sleeved and in three-ring binders. Many have since been rehoused in archival binders. However, replacing the sleeves for all photographic prints, negatives, and slides was not prioritized in favor of maximizing processing times. Sleeves were replaced for any materials that showed signs of significant deterioration.

Arrangement:

The collection is arranged into the following 15 series:

Series I. Notebook page drawings, 1953-1985, undated (bulk: 1960-1966)

Series II. Clippings, 1960-2017, undated

Series III. Ephemera, 1929, 1955-2019, undated (bulk: 1955-1985)

Series IV. Patterns, plans, and studies, circa 1960s-2000s

Series V. Business records and correspondence, 1941-2010s, undated

Series VI. Personal papers and correspondence, circa 1920s-2010s

Series VII. Juvenilia, circa 1930s, undated

Series VIII. Diaries and logs, circa 1940s-2010s

Series IX. Notes, circa 1960s-2010s

Series X. Poems, circa 1950s-1980s (bulk: 1960s)

Series XI. Performance scripts, circa 1960s-1980s

Series XII. Other writings, circa 1960s-2010s

Series XIII. Coosje van Bruggen, circa 1950s-2000s

Series XIV. Audiovisual materials, 1940s-2011, undated

Series XV. Digital materials, circa 2000s-2010s

Physical location:
Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the catalog record for this collection. Click here for the access policy
Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Bibliography:

Axsom, Richard H., and David Platzker. Printed Stuff: Prints, Posters, and Ephemera by Claes Oldenburg: a Catalogue Raisonné 1958-1996. Hudson Hills, 1997.

Pace Gallery. "Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen." Accessed September 30, 2024. https://www.pacegallery.com/artists/Oldenburg-van-bruggen/.

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. "Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen." Accessed September 30, 2024. https://wayback.archive-it.org/9569/20201012221618/http://oldenburgvanbruggen.com/.

Greater Des Moines Public Art Foundation. "Coosje van Bruggen." Accessed September 30, 2024. https://dsmpublicartfoundation.org/artist/coosje-van-bruggen/

Hochdörfer, Achim, and Barbara Schröder. Claes Oldenburg: The Sixties. Orbit Books, 2012.

Kino, Carol. "Coosje van Bruggen, Sculptor, Dies at 66." The New York Times (New York, NY), January 13, 2009.

Lacayo, Richard. 2009. "Coosje Van Bruggen: 1942-2009" Time Magazine Online. January 13, 2009. https://entertainment.time.com/2009/01/13/coosje-van-bruggen-1942-2009/

Patty Mucha Papers; MSS 342; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University.

Phillips, Glenn, "Acquisition Approval Form for 'Claes Oldenburg (American, 1929-2022), Archive, ca. 1920s-2018 (bulk 1952-2018)'" accession no. 2020.M.4, September 12, 2018.

Rose, Barbara. "Claes Oldenburg." Interview Magazine. December 9, 2015. https://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/claes-oldenburg.

Russeth, Andrew. "Six Feet of the 1960s and '70s: Patty Mucha—Once Mrs. Oldenburg—on Her Archives and New Memoir." Observer. January 16, 2012. https://observer.com/2012/01/patty-mucha-oldenburg-on-her-archives-01162012/

About this collection guide

Collection Guide Author:
Meg Suhosky, Sierra Komar, Jenny Le, Lauren McDaniel
Date Encoded:
This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2025-04-16 08:52:46 -0700 .

Access and use

Restrictions:

Processed materials are open for use by qualified researchers.

Unprocessed materials are unavailable until processing and conservation treatments are complete. Audiovisual and born-digital materials are unavailable until reformatted. The finding aid will be updated as other materials become available.

All materials that are described in the published finding aid are available for research; however, the following series in this collection are in process or partially processed and include materials that may be unavailable. Refer to container lists for these series to view or request material currently available for research:

Series IV. Patterns, plans, and studies, circa 1960s-2000s Series V. Business records and correspondence, 1941-2010s, undated Series VIII. Diaries and logs, circa 1940s-2010s Series IX. Notes, circa 1940s-2010s Series X. Poems, circa 1940s-2010s Series XI. Performance scripts, circa 1950s-2010s Series XII. Other writings, circa 1950s-2010s Series XIII. Coosje van Bruggen, circa 1950s-2010s Series XV. Digital materials, circa 2000s-2010s

Terms of access:

Contact Library Reproductions and Permissions.

Preferred citation:

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen papers, 1920s-2019, undated, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 2020.M.4.

http://hdl.handle.net/10020/archives2020m4

Location of this collection:
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100
Los Angeles, CA 90049-1688, US
Contact:
(310) 440-7390
Website