Ice Bag–Scale B

Claes Oldenburg took a distinctive approach to sculpture, recreating everyday objects such as typewriters, hamburgers, and ice bags, as shown here. Using fabric, such as nylon and vinyl, Oldenburg gave these familiar items their characteristically soft appearance and enlarged them far beyond their actual size. Oldenburg intended this ice bag to be kinetic, or a moving sculpture, which twisted, inflated, and deflated over an approximately two-minute period. He wrote that the piece evoked “the life of forms similar to the ice bag form: breasts, stomachs, spiderwebs, sponges, cupolas, and so on.”