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I put up a lot of statues, but not a baseball bat.

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This is the first one.

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It might be the last one, I don't know.

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But this is the first time.

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I did use a bat in a Chicago performance, the University of Chicago, in 1963, early in

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The performance is called Gaiety.

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And then I made a proposal in 1967.

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For a bat spinning at the speed of light for a site in Chicago, which was North Avenue

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and Clark Street, in front of the Chicago acting school.

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To a rather vague request, someone had made for a sculpture there.

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I mean, sometimes I just take a request and I make a drawing out of it without ever imagining

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it's going to actually be erected.

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So that was first concept of the bat subject as a large scale sculpture or monument for

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Chicago.

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That was in 67.

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This came to me in 1975, early 1975.

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Father, we thank you.

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We thank you for the gift of artists, the gift of other people who help the artists

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to exist.

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We thank you for people who force us to look, to feel, to hear differently.

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We thank you that today, in this monument, we can look at something very ordinary and

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see how extraordinary it is.

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It's a very strange situation for me to find myself in.

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So I'm not going to say very much, except that it took a long time to reach this moment.

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I'm not quite sure that I believe that it's here.

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I've been to look at it several times, at different times of day, and I'm beginning

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to believe that it is here.

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And it's dawning on me that this is over and it's standing, which makes me very, very

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happy and fills me with a great deal of gratitude for everybody involved.

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And that's about all I can say.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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It's always great to be in Chicago, a city that loves art as much as I do.

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This is Claude Oldenburg's day, and all of Chicago and all of the nation celebrates

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this great artist, who, in this monumental baseball bat, celebrates America's love of

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life.

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In thinking about how best to honor Claude Oldenburg, I came across some words that he

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had written 16 years ago.

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He made a list of goals, things that he desired for American art, and I thought that it

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would be appropriate to be reminded of what his earlier ambitions were.

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This street and this city are more special and more meaningful because that column is

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here.

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What more can be asked from the work of art or from its creator?

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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To your left.

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A lot of balloons to your left, Jack.

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I want to thank everybody for coming and also thanking the choir across the street.

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It wasn't until about April 75, a few months after I got the commission that anything really positive began to emerge.

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And that grew out of a lithograph that I was working on at the Landfault Press.

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I'd been inspired by a photograph I'd seen of a tornado in the newspaper.

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So that associated in my mind, and the result was to do a lithograph on the subject of the spinning bat.

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So I did that, and in the course of making the stones for the spinning bat lithograph, one stone occurred that was very linear.

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It was just the contour of the bat.

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We ask the future, being able to look at our ordinary neighbors and see the goodness and the greatness there.

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When we look at this culture, we have to raise our eyes.

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We have to raise our heads.

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We ask that you would help us raise our heads, our minds.

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If you would go help us to go from small minds to expanded minds, from uglyness to beauty, from hate to goodness, from division to peace.

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Money you're going to get, but there's absolutely no...

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They don't tell you what you have to build or anything.

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You're simply given the commission, and then you have to think about it for a while.

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At least this is my procedure.

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I have to think about it for several months until some kind of a subject evolves that is suitable for the particular site.

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Yes.

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Well, I got this commission in 1975, and I went out and looked at the site, which at that time was different from now because the building wasn't completed.

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What I saw mostly was a large open space in what had been Skid Row, Chicago.

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So I got quite involved with this open space and thought about that a lot.

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Rather than the building, as I said, which wasn't at that time completed.

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And also I thought about the things standing around this open space.

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Watch your hands, please.

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Okay.

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Check that.

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Thanks, boy.

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Check the sound.

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There's something on it.

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Well, I went to the woods because...

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Can you hand it to me for one second?

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The front open, the essential factors of life.

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Well, check it out.

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The sudden fall of the marrow...

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The sound is what he did it out is what the problem is.

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The drive light...

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There's something on the head.

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I'll put another magazine on it.

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No, that's not the problem.

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To give a true account of it.

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Kenny, you want any?

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Yes.

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I like that drawing very much.

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And I thought at the time that perhaps one of the ways of getting a large scale sculpture

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was to reduce the form to a line and just throw the line up in space.

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I thought this would be a possibility.

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So having in mind this drawing of the bat as a pure line, I went down to the site.

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But I realized that it would be rather thin.

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It wouldn't have any dimensions such as sculpture.

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So I had to fill it out more.

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But with the linear concept still in mind, I developed it as a lattice or a network.

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And this was definitely inspired by seeing the cranes on the site

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and the bridges around the river and the elves and the fire escapes

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and all that kind of iron construction, the linear type that I'm so aware of in Chicago.

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And so the column was formulated as an open structure, a linear structure outlined against the sky.

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It wasn't to spin. It was simply to stand there.

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But the fact of the sky coming through the open work gives it not only lightness,

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but a lot of movement so that as you walk around it, you see the sky shifting and changing

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and the form is changing.

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And I always use objects.

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I always use objects as a starting point for my work.

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But what happens to the object is something else.

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I mean, it changes from the original object into something of my own.

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In this case, I have been interested for some time in how to penetrate the object,

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how to make the inside visible, how to relate the inside and the outside of the object.

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Because most objects you just see the exterior of, and I think the inside of an object could be very interesting,

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as I've often speculated how it would feel to live inside a pencil sharpener or a stapler or something like that.

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This use of a lattice construction makes that possible.

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It also gives the object, as I say, a certain lightness and it changes the character of the object.

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It goes against the solid nature of an object. It dematerializes it.

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And that I like very much too.

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I'm a sportsman.

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So maybe a really different one.

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I'm interested in why a badge, I guess.

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Well, it's...

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What are you doing there?

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The occasion is marvelous.

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The wonderful occasion.

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Could be better.

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American sports.

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Transparent baseball bats.

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I think it should be covered with vinyl tile in imitation of wood grain, don't you?

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No, I do not. I think it's just right the way it is.

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You do?

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I think it means an absolutely beautiful object.

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And I think that it is in the tradition of great sculpture,

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without any stylistic reference, a perfect object.

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Period.

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And common Chicago totem because it's the first great work of art.

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And as such, I think it will be identifiable with Chicago just as the Picasso sculpture has become,

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in a sense, a symbol of Chicago sculpture.

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The knife's functioned enough so that it can become an artwork.

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The whole process has been one of great risk, I think.

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This means that they have to confront the fact that it is a work of art.

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Because everybody knows what a bat is, and they can see after a while that this is not a bat.

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It's something else. It's a sculpture.

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So we hope for the best.