Coosje van Bruggen dies at 66; art historian made sculptures with husband Claes Oldenburg
Vera Isler
Coosje van Bruggen was a respected art historian, writer and curator known for her almost scientific approach to looking at an artist’s oeuvre. She collaborated with her husband, artist Claes Oldenburg, to build startlingly large sculptures of ordinary objects.
Works include a dropped ice cream cone in Germany; a bow and arrow in San Francisco; a broom and dustpan in Denver, ‘Toppling Ladder with Spilling Paint’ in downtown L.A. and binoculars in Venice.
By Suzanne Muchnic, January 13, 2009
Coosje van Bruggen — an art historian, writer and curator whose professional partnership with her husband, artist Claes Oldenburg, turned ordinary objects into startling monuments around the world — died Saturday at her Los Angeles residence. She was 66 and was battling metastatic breast cancer.
Van Bruggen was the author of scholarly books and essays on the work of major contemporary artists including John Baldessari, Bruce Nauman and Gerhard Richter. She also wrote a monograph on architect Frank O. Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. But she is best known for collaborations with Oldenburg, which have placed giant trowels, shuttlecocks, bowling pins and typewriter erasers on parklands, civic squares and museum grounds in Europe, Asia and the United States. Cologne, Germany, has its upside-down ice cream cone; San Francisco, its bow and arrow; Denver, its dustpan and broom.
In Los Angeles, “Collar and Bow” — a 65-foot metal and fiberglass sculpture in the shape of a man’s dress shirt collar and bow tie, designed for a spot outside Walt Disney Concert Hall — was stalled and eventually canceled because of technical problems and escalating costs. But Van Bruggen and Oldenburg are represented by other public works including “Toppling Ladder With Spilling Paint” at Loyola Law School in downtown L.A. and “Binoculars,” the central component of a commercial building in Venice designed by Gehry.