Claes Chi Bat

Transcript (Download)

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

This is the first one.

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

But this is the first time.

I did use a bat in a Chicago performance, the University of Chicago, in 1963, early in The performance is called Gaiety.

And then I made a proposal in 1967.

For a bat spinning at the speed of light for a site in Chicago, which was North Avenue and Clark Street, in front of the Chicago acting school.

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

I mean, sometimes I just take a request and I make a drawing out of it without ever imagining it's going to actually be erected.

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

That was in 67.

This came to me in 1975, early 1975.

Father, we thank you.

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

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

We thank you that today, in this monument, we can look at something very ordinary and see how extraordinary it is.

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

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

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

I've been to look at it several times, at different times of day, and I'm beginning to believe that it is here.

And it's dawning on me that this is over and it's standing, which makes me very, very happy and fills me with a great deal of gratitude for everybody involved.

And that's about all I can say.

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

This is Claude Oldenburg's day, and all of Chicago and all of the nation celebrates this great artist, who, in this monumental baseball bat, celebrates America's love of life.

In thinking about how best to honor Claude Oldenburg, I came across some words that he had written 16 years ago.

He made a list of goals, things that he desired for American art, and I thought that it would be appropriate to be reminded of what his earlier ambitions were.

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

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

A lot of balloons to your left, Jack.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was just the contour of the bat.

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

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

We have to raise our heads.

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

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.

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

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

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

At least this is my procedure.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Watch your hands, please.

Check the sound.

There's something on it.

Well, I went to the woods because...

Can you hand it to me for one second? The front open, the essential factors of life.

Well, check it out.

The sudden fall of the marrow...

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

The drive light...

There's something on the head.

I'll put another magazine on it.

No, that's not the problem.

To give a true account of it.

Kenny, you want any? Yes.

I like that drawing very much.

And I thought at the time that perhaps one of the ways of getting a large scale sculpture was to reduce the form to a line and just throw the line up in space.

I thought this would be a possibility.

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

But I realized that it would be rather thin.

It wouldn't have any dimensions such as sculpture.

So I had to fill it out more.

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

And this was definitely inspired by seeing the cranes on the site and the bridges around the river and the elves and the fire escapes and all that kind of iron construction, the linear type that I'm so aware of in Chicago.

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

It wasn't to spin.

It was simply to stand there.

But the fact of the sky coming through the open work gives it not only lightness, but a lot of movement so that as you walk around it, you see the sky shifting and changing and the form is changing.

And I always use objects.

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

But what happens to the object is something else.

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

In this case, I have been interested for some time in how to penetrate the object, how to make the inside visible, how to relate the inside and the outside of the object.

Because most objects you just see the exterior of, and I think the inside of an object could be very interesting, as I've often speculated how it would feel to live inside a pencil sharpener or a stapler or something like that.

This use of a lattice construction makes that possible.

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

It goes against the solid nature of an object.

It dematerializes it.

And that I like very much too.

I'm a sportsman.

So maybe a really different one.

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

What are you doing there? The occasion is marvelous.

The wonderful occasion.

Could be better.

American sports.

Transparent baseball bats.

I think it should be covered with vinyl tile in imitation of wood grain, don't you? No, I do not.

I think it's just right the way it is.

You do? I think it means an absolutely beautiful object.

And I think that it is in the tradition of great sculpture, without any stylistic reference, a perfect object.

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

And as such, I think it will be identifiable with Chicago just as the Picasso sculpture has become, in a sense, a symbol of Chicago sculpture.

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

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

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

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

It's something else.

It's a sculpture.

So we hope for the best.

Identifier

F.2005-08-0266

Date Of Production

1977

Abstract

Claes Oldenburg's "Batcolumn" sculpture is dedicated on April 14, 1977, outside the newly built Social Security Administration Center at 600 West Madison Street in downtown Chicago. The 100-foot tall steel structure was commissioned for $100,000 as part of the General Services Administration's art-in-architecture program, which aimed to place contemporary American art in and around newly constructed federal buildings.

Description

Begins with scenes of tourists touching and photographing the Liberty Bell and a bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln.

Now in Chicago, journalists talk to Swedish-American artist Claes Oldenburg, and his 100-foot tall baseball bat sculpture is moved into position (a humorously understated "LONG LOAD" sign is attached to the sculpture as it is driven to 600 W Madison St). Workers in hard hats attach the latticed sculpture to hooks on a crane, and it is hoisted upright. A crowd applauds as the massive screws are tightened at the base. A small group of protesters can be seen holding signs that say "EXPENSIVE JOKE" and "SILLY, ISN'T IT?"

Next, Oldenburg speaks from an outdoor stage, followed by Second Lady Joan Mondale (who was nicknamed 'Joan of Art' for her arts advocacy). Guests on stage include interim Chicago Mayor Michael Anthony Bilandic, baseball player Ernie Banks, and Michael Straight, Deputy Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. When Mondale is done speaking, she, Banks, and Oldenburg release red and white balloons into the air around the Batcolumn. Afterwards, Oldenburg signs autographs and speaks with the press (Chicago filmmakers Tom Palazzolo and Allen Ross can be seen holding camera equipment). Workers are seen breaking down the event once it is over, packing potted plants into a truck and collecting cables.

The film concludes with a Claes Oldenburg exhibition elsewhere in Chicago, followed by a banquet which includes an appearance by Art Institute curator of 20th-century painting and sculpture A. James Speyer, and a sit-down interview with Oldenburg and his wife and collaborator, Coosje van Bruggen.

Run Time

0:17:34

Format

Super 8

Extent

265 feet

Color

Color

Sound

Mag Stripe

Reel/Tape Number

1/1

Has Been Digitized?

Yes

Element

Reversal Positives

Genre

Documentary

Form

Amateur

Subject

Art
Baseball
Chicago (Ill.)
Design
Construction

Preservation Sponsor

Related Collections

Subseries I: Completed Works

Related Places

North America ➜ United States ➜ Illinois ➜ Chicago

Main Credits

Stamets, Bill (is filmmaker)

Participants And Performers

Oldenburg, Claes (is participant)

Mondale, Joan (is participant)

Ross, Allen (is participant)

Palazzolo, Tom (is participant)

Banks, Ernie (is participant)

Bilandic, Michael Anthony (is participant)

Straight, Michael W. (is participant)

van Bruggen, Coosje (is participant)

Speyer, A. James (is participant)

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