This
"still-life drama" included objects that "might offend a museum": an apple
core, an abandoned car muffler, and a cross section of a toothbrush, the
last a soft, plantlike version of a steel sculpture that was installed in
front of the museum.
--van Bruggen,
1988 Il Corso del Coltello In
collaboration with van Bruggen and architect Frank O. Gehry, Oldenburg
presented a major performance in Venice, Italy, in 1985 called Il Corso
del Coltello (The Course of the Knife). The centerpiece of the
performance was a giant kinetic sculpture, Knife Ship I, which was
launched from Venice's centuries-old naval yard, the Arsenale.
Oldenburg, van Bruggen, and Gehry performed in costume as, respectively,
Dr. Coltello, a traveling souvenir salesman; Georgia Sandbag, George Sand
reincarnated as an itinerant travel agent; and Frankie P. (for Palladio)
Toronto, a barber from California. Enlarged sculptural versions of these
and other costumes from the performance are included in this exhibition.
Georgia Sandbag's belongings are wound into the large Houseball, which is
installed on the floor of the main rotunda.
Also see: The Entropic Library and Il Corso del Coletello
Since 1985,
Oldenburg and writer Coosje van Bruggen have created a number of large
indoor installations on European themes. The Haunted House (1987),
for example, was comprised of sculptures in the form of "objects randomly
accumulated from the city"; these were scattered in the rooms of a museum
in Krefeld, Germany, as if tossed through the windows.
"The Haunted House is
based upon the random objects of a vacant suburban lot, objects set in
their casual positions by some disinterested force: a playing child, a
passing vagrant, a gust of wind."
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