While continuing to explore new forms of creation in the 1970s, Oldenburg found widespread acclaim for his collaborations with the Dutch artist Coosje van Bruggen (1942 - 2009). Together, Oldenburg and van Bruggen created Large-Scale Projects, a series of colossal sculptures of everyday objects. Prior to collaborating with Oldenburg, Coosje van Bruggen curated exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and taught art history at the Academy of Fine Arts in Enschede, the Netherlands. In 1976, van Bruggen collaborated with Oldenburg on Trowel I, a Large-Scale Project at the Kroller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, the Netherlands. At the same time, a romance began to unfold between the two. The couple’s artistic partnership ensued, and they married a year later.  Over the following three decades, the artists created a body of work that merged Oldenburg’s established style with van Bruggen’s artistic and curatorial knowledge. From their Large-Scale Projects—commissioned as public art monuments across the globe—to smaller sculptures and charcoal drawings, the artists’ work grew as a product of their relationship and their values, as well as the life that they led together.

Perhaps the works of Oldenburg and van Bruggen that most clearly exemplify the essence of their artistic creations are those created in Beaumont, France. In the 1990s, the artists were drawn to the Loire Valley of France for, as Oldenburg described, “a retreat for inspiration where ideas could be pursued without interruption.” In 1992, the artists purchased the Château de la Borde at Beaumont-sur-Dême and retreated there at least once a year for the remainder of their artistic careers. While Oldenburg and van Bruggen continued larger-scale commissions throughout the United States and Europe, in Beaumont, they worked on smaller models and sketches. As Oldenburg saw it, these pieces “began as studies for larger works but [took] on a life of their own.”

The artwork certainly took on “this life” that Oldenburg identified: inspired by the surrounding natural and social milieu of the Château, the artists created a vibrant body of work over the next fifteen years. Some works drew directly from the landscape; sculptures of clarinets represented tree trunks and violins sagged as if they were hunting pouches. The theme of musicality drew on the social history of Beaumont: writers such as Honoré Balzac, Marcel Proust, and George Sand once retreated nearby, all of whom, like van Bruggen, shared a special interest in classical music. Oldenburg and van Bruggen’s work captured this history, as they depict musical instruments imbued with soft, human postures as if they are gathering for social festivities. Caught in motion, the pieces appear in dialogue with each other, whether as instruments in an orchestra or as characters in a salon.

Converting the Château’s old salon into what they called The Music Room, beginning in 2000, the artists would hang sculptures around the room. Oldenburg and van Bruggen created Soft French Horn, Unwound, 2002, and Tied Trumpet from 2004 to 2006 at this time, which were displayed in The Music Room. The wall-mounted, oversized Soft French Horn, Unwound, gracefully unravels the instrument’s normally tightly wound tubes into gently looping coils with anthropomorphic, bodily proportions. Made largely of cardboard and wood, Tied Trumpet stands on its horn as its mouthpiece shoots into the air. The neck of the trumpet is long and wraps around itself, its whole body is covered with yellow and white paint, and its finger buttons hang limply from its downturned valves. The trumpet remains upright thanks to a red rope tied around its neck. By imbuing their instruments with an anthropomorphic quality, Oldenburg and van Bruggen add novel additions to the conventional conceptions of what constitutes an instrument. Van Bruggen states, “with hints remaining of their original individual identities and objectness, the recomposed instrumental pieces, [are] cut off from their habitual function.” She continues, “each piece, now with an intensified tactility, bears the imprint of human presence, in absence.”

Works of art by Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen are © 2002 & 2004-06 Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen.