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One way of dealing with Oldenburg's unbuildable projects is to see them as monstrous parodies of this situation. In 1965, he dreamed up a monument for upper Central Park in the form of a giant teddy bear: this woebegone and helpless image was, for Oldenburg, "an incarnation of white conscience; as such, it fixes white New York with an accusing glance from Harlem but also one glassy-eyed from desperation. This may be why I chose a toy with the 'amputated' effect of teddy paws—handlessness signifies society's frustrating lack of tools."
In 1969, Oldenburg came as close as he ever got to actually building a monument when a group of Yale graduate students asked him to design one for "the second American revolution." They had been inspired by the New Left's guru Herbert Marcuse, who, having seen Oldenburg's drawings, announced that "there is a way in which this kind of satire, or humor, can in deed kill. I think it would be one of the most bloodless means to effect a rad ical change." Oldenburg's response took the form of a vast red lipstick which telescoped up and down, stiff ening and softening, from Caterpillar tracks. It was polemical, a mixture of cosmetic, phallus and rocket carrier — the ultimate weapon. The fate of this work was as appropriate as its original message: removed from the Yale cam pus, it now lies disintegrating in a Connecticut factory yard, along with the Yippies' fantasies of instant revolution.
But the lipstick provided Oldenburg with other, related images, such as his proposed monument for Marilyn Mon roe, Lipstick with Stroke Attached, 1971. It looks flat, decorative and in nocuous — until one notices that the gleaming "stroke" of red-sprayed met al, lying flat on the floor, could also be the reaping blade of a scythe.
This not-so-hidden menace in Ol denburg's work is truly obsessive, and it supplies one of the reasons why his art cannot be seen clearly in the Pop art atmosphere of flaccid, easygoing ac ceptance of the commercial image.
Some of his monuments, if built, would be lethal. One consists of twelve-story-high bowling balls rolling inexorably down the alley of Park Avenue. "The balls," notes Oldenburg, "are an at tempt to make tangible my feeling that Park Avenue is a dangerous street where you can get run over and killed very easily. The balls intensify and monumentalize this danger." Another, for Grant Park in Chicago, is a pro digious windshield wiper, slapping back and forth between two long rectangular pools. Says the artist: "These serve as swimming pools for the city's children.
However, from time to time the blade of the Giant Wiper descends into the water. If one doesn't want to get hit, one must watch it and get out in time.
The Wiper makes the sky tangible in that it treats the sky as if it were glass.
Making the intangible tangible has al ways been one of my fascinations.
But 'wipe out' is slang for 'kill,' isn't it?"