I’ve seen some pretty unusual works of art in my life, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like this: an entire wedding cake made out of pieces of a Claes Oldenburg sculpture.
I spotted this wonderful object while on a tour of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation in Beverly Hills, and admit it does look like an elaborate, slightly lumpy white wedding cake. Look closer though, and you can see the obvious seams. This isn’t one sculpture carved to look like a cake — it is a cake assembled from individual slices of one of Oldenburg’s most delightfully unconventional works, Wedding Souvenir, created in 1966.
In Valentine (1966), artist Evelyne Axell (1935 – 1972) combines an idealized feminine silhouette with a spacesuit helmet. This artwork was made during the 1960s Space Race, when the United States and the Soviet Union competed for dominance in space exploration. The title refers to a Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, who was the first woman in space. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Valentine By Evelyne Axell→
In Orange Mood (1966), Helen Frankenthaler (1928 – 2011) thinned acrylic paint to the consistency of watercolor in order to create larger, curving expanses of color through which the weave of the canvas remains visible. Like Jackson Pollack, she placed her canvas directly on the floor and poured paint from above, largely without the aid of a brush. Frankenthaler used color as her painterly language, but she never entirely abandoned representation. Although the references can be subtle, her paintings consistently evoke nature.
Paco Rabanne presented his first fashion collection in 1966. It was entitled 12 Dresses in Unwearable Materials and included garments made from links of plastic fastened with metal hoops. Rabanne had proven that fabric, needle and thread were not altogether necessary to clothing design, and he quickly gained fame for his defiance of tradition.
Ready-to-wear Dress Circa 1966: Silver and Black Plastic Discs, Metal Hoops. Photographed in the Museum at FIT in Manhattan.
