I

The Story

A hamburger lies on the floor, huge, soft, and slightly ridiculous. It is no longer fast food. It is a body, a cushion, a monument to appetite. Oldenburg makes consumer culture sag, wrinkle, and occupy space with comic insistence.

II

The Technique

Canvas filled with foam and cardboard, painted with acrylic. Soft sculpture transforms hard commodity imagery into bodily form.

III

Hidden Symbols

The burger represents mass consumption, American appetite, and the absurd enlargement of everyday desire.

IV

The World It Was Born In

Postwar consumer culture made packaged food and advertising central to daily American life.

V

The Artist's Voice

I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.
Claes Oldenburg
VI

What Came After

Oldenburg expanded sculpture beyond bronze and stone into soft materials, humor, and everyday objects.

What did this stir in you?