Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Cleveland’s Free Stamp. Edward J. Olszewski
Garden in Washington, D.C. (fig. 20). The sculptors’ Cross Section of a Toothbrush with Paste, in a Cup, on a Sink: Portrait of Coosje’s Thinking, in Krefeld, Germany, since 1983, was originally intended for placement on the University of Hartford campus on a path between student dormitories and classroom buildings.1 The Board of Regents rejected it by a 3–2 vote in March 1982 in spite of its being recommended by the university president, who had the support of the dean of the Hartford Art School, the director of the Wadsworth Atheneum, and the head of the Yale University Art Gallery. Although the sculptors had installed Spitzhacke (Pickaxe) in Krefeld, Germany, in 1982 and Gartenschlauch (Garden Hose) the following year, this was also a period of some disappointment for them that saw another rejection.
Grants totaling $190,000 had been arranged to fund a sculpture for the well-known ski resort in Vail, Colorado. Oldenburg and van Bruggen designed an elegant 60-foot fishing pole with a barrel-sized tin can at the end of the line. The village authorities objected, and the sculpture was abandoned.2 Of these works, however, the Cleveland commission was the most controversial and the lengthiest of the sculptors’ installations. While corporate executives, city fathers, and the Cleveland public wrangled over the merits of Free Stamp, the sculptors installed Spoonbridge and Cherry in Minneapolis, and Dropped Bowl with Scattered Slices and Peels and Bicyclette Ensevelie (Buried Bicycle) were nearing completion in Miami and Paris, respectively. Mistos (Match Cover) was also in process for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Chicago already had its 101-foot Batcolumn and Philadelphia its Clothespin. While Cleveland dithered, the sculptors were busy cementing their international reputation.
Figure 20 Claes Oldenburg, Typewriter Eraser, Scale X 2/4, 1999, stainless steel and molded fiber-reinforced plastic painted with acrylic polyurethane, 19 ft. 3 in. × 11 ft. 9-1/2 in. × 11 ft. 6-1/4 in. (5.87 × 3.59 × 3.51 m), edition of four. National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., gift of the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation. Courtesy of the Oldenburg van Bruggen Studio
The Cleveland project never achieved the notoriety of two other cases of sculptural controversy at this time, Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc, commissioned in 1979 by the Art in Architecture Program of the General Services Administration for a lower Manhattan plaza and rejected and dismantled ten years later, and Maya Lin’s design for a Vietnam memorial for the Mall in Washington, D.C.3 The Serra commission is relevant to Free Stamp as a rejected site-specific work. A public outcry defeated the project, and the 12 × 120–foot iron arc was dismantled and stored in a parking lot in Brooklyn. Serra’s graceful sculpture dissected the plaza of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building. While it did not seriously disrupt pedestrian traffic patterns, it did interrupt a clear view across the plaza, which Douglas Crimp has described as “a bleak, empty area” surrounded by “vulgarized International Style architecture.”4 Serra defined “site-specific” as conceived for a location, dependent upon it, and inseparable from it.5 Despite the power and elegance of many of his sculptures, it is difficult to defend the artist who had a predilection for filling any space allotted to him, with none ever seeming large enough. The art literature rarely touches on artistic arrogance, lack of foresight, or ecological damage in artistic installations. Crimp has noted that “Serra once again used sculpture to hold its site hostage.”6 His iron sculpture for a neo-Gothic hall at the Yale University Art Gallery makes the space nonfunctional for any gathering or display.
Maya Lin’s design was the object of debate for its abstraction. Some members of the review committee held their own opinions on how a monument should look, and were oblivious to its clean lines and intellectual rigor. The oblique V-shape pointed at one end to the Washington Monument on the Mall and at the other to the Lincoln Memorial. Its shape echoed the stripe of the privates who bore the brunt of combat. The wedge bored into the ground so that visitors descended as they read the names of the dead on the wall, while their reflections appeared wraith-like in the polished black marble—for some a statement of visual eloquence to rival anything written of the underworld by Virgil or Dante, for others a severe abstraction. The names of the dead increased in number as the war escalated, forcing the wedge to dig deeper into the earth, then diminished as the conflict came to a conclusion, with only a few names at each opposite point. In spite of the controversy, the sculpture was installed, but, as an afterthought, Fred Hart’s bronze group of soldiers was added. For some it added an unnecessary touch of kitsch, marring the minimal purity of the design and its intellectual dignity. Given the difficulties of trying to conform with the multivalent tastes of a heterogeneous public, sculpture in the public domain is never free of risk or controversy.
5
THE LEGAL ISSUE
Standard Oil contract No. 44–0641–5034 stipulated that the sculpture was to be original (p. 3, article 10.1); that it could not be copied by the artist except in 2-D or small-scale 3-D (10.2); that it could not be copied or duplicated by OWNER (Standard Oil) (10.3); that OWNER could make photographs, films, etc., but could not use the work for promotional purposes (10.4); that the artist owned all studies, preliminary drawings, etc., except the original maquette (10.5); and that the artist reserved the right to copyright the work. Article 11.4 stipulated that “[i]n case of dispute, CONTRACTOR (the sculptors) shall continue to prosecute the work pending determination thereof, unless requested by OWNER to suspend the work,” which would seem to grant Standard Oil control of the installation, although this was probably intended to deal with construction problems. Article 15 provided a termination right to Standard Oil only if the City did not grant approval of the project (which had been given on September 15, 1985). Oldenburg’s letter of March 19, 1986, stated, “The Free Stamp is not only ‘site specific’ but an integral part of the plaza and architecture of the new Standard Oil Building developed in consultation with the architects Gyo Obata and James McDonald. . . . Therefore, the Free Stamp cannot be resited, only eliminated.”
Anna Choko of the law firm of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey argued in an in-house memo of March 29, 1986, as a preliminary finding, that the sculptors had to show that they suffered damages from the rejection of their sculpture, or that there was no adequate remedy.1 Because Oldenburg and van Bruggen had completed their function, Standard Oil had no further obligation. The sculpture’s installation would create an “undue hardship” on the employer (Standard Oil) in erecting something it no longer wanted, and the contract had set no limits on the removal of the work. She advised that the statement of rejection had to be tactful and strategic so that the sculptors could not claim that rejection harmed their reputation, ergo the persistent declaration that “the sculpture was inappropriate.”2 In another memo, of May 8, 1986, Choko posed questions of rights an artist has to his work when its ownership is vested in another, and whether changing the site of a sculpture altered, distorted, and misrepresented the artist’s work to the public.3 She opined,
It is highly unlikely that a court will hold that a sculpture, even though distinguishable from most other forms of art in that it bears a greater relationship to the site at which it is located will be altered or mutilated by placement at an alternative site. . . . It is difficult to imagine and highly unlikely that a court would arrive at the conclusion . . . that an artist has a right not to have his work mutilated, distorted or altered, could be extrapolated so far as to characterize the moving of the site of the sculpture as mutilating that sculpture so that it substantially departs from the original. Oldenburg, the artist would have to argue that his work encompasses not only his sculpture but both the Free Stamp and the site in front of the Standard Oil building to make the argument that moving the site is distorting and thereby misrepresenting his art work, the sculpture.
Choko cautioned, however, that “[w]hile an opinion, as indicated in Redgrave, may not be actionable, the wiser course in dealing with the decision not to place Free Stamp would be to make as little public statement as possible. Whatever message others would take from Standard Oil’s decision