Batcolumn

Batcolumn. Claes Oldenburg, 1977. For his commission to create a public sculpture for the Social Security Administration building, Claes Oldenburg selected the baseball bat as an emblem of Chicago's ambition and vigor. The sculpture's verticality echoes the city's dramatic skyline, while its form and scale cleverly allude to more traditional civic monuments, such as obelisks and memorial columns. The pattern of the sculpture's crisscrossing structural latticework forms an elegant silhouette against the open sky. , , Claes Oldenburg emerged in the early 1960s as one of the leading figures of American Pop Art, a movement that took its inspiration from popular culture, such as comic strips, advertisements, and mass-produced consumer goods. Oldenburg's art transforms these everyday objects through dramatic shifts in scale and materials. His art embraces the complexity of modern society and is intended to bring art into direct contact with daily life. Oldenburg's work is widely exhibited and is included in the permanent collections of the world's leading art museums. , , Oldenburg was born in Stockholm, Sweden, on January 28, 1929. His father, a Swedish diplomat, moved the family to Chicago in 1936. Oldenburg attended the Chicago Latin School, graduated from Yale University in 1950, and became an American citizen in 1953. , , Commissioned by the Art in Architecture Program