Throughout his career Swedish-born sculptor Claes Oldenburg has transformed commonplace objects into uncommon art through his inventive manipulation of form and scale. In the mid-1960s, he undertook a series of drawings for fantastical civic monuments conceived as colossal in scope. An outgrowth of his heroically proportioned soft sculptures, the proposed monuments took the form of objects that Oldenburg deemed uniquely emblematic of a particular city's mood or spirit. In 1966 his visit to London spawned several monument proposals. As Oldenburg told ARTnews, the British capital "inspired phallic imagery which went up and down like the tide—like miniskirts and knees and the part of the leg you see between the skirt and the boot." In this image, Oldenburg holds the ready-made mannequin knee that was the basis for the towering "Knees Monument" he envisioned for the Victoria Embankment.

Hans Hammarskiöld (born 1925)
Gelatin silver print, 1966
Published May 1967
Hans Hammarskiöld
©Hans Hammarskiöld

Portrait of the Art World: A Century of ARTnews Photographs
National Portrait Gallery/Smithsonian Institution

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