Claes Oldenburg

My single-minded aim is to give existence to fantasy.

A life cycle can be imposed on an object. An object can be very energetic and active, and then it has a dying phase and a phase of decomposition.

I like to treat paint as material - to daub it, drop it, let it slide. There was Action Painting, but I also compare it to paint effects found on the streets. This approach is superimposed on a sculptural surface that is also 'painterly.'

Chicago has a strange metaphysical elegance of death about it.

If you really want to be an artist, you search yourself, and you find a lot of it comes from earlier times. I have pretty much built the work around my experiences. When I've moved from one place to another, the work has changed.

I think of a monument as being symbolic and for the people and therefore rhetorical, not honest, not personal.