Two Portraits of Claes Oldenburg, circa 1969

[Connecticut, 1969. Near Fine. Two gelatin silver prints (20” x 14 ½”) and (19 ½” x 14”), each Signed by the photographer. A few tiny specks on the image surface of one print, the smaller print is a little unevenly trimmed at the blank margins, near fine. Two large, striking images of the Swedish-born American sculptor Claes Oldenburg, best known for his public art installations typically featuring large replicas of everyday objects.

The photographs were likely taken at New Haven, Connecticut, when Oldenburg surreptitiously erected his monumental tube of lipstick sprouting from a military vehicle: “Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks” on the campus of Yale University amidst the 1969 student protests against the Vietnam War. The photographs were taken by the Connecticut photographer and graphic artist Joel Katz. A student of Walker Evans at the Yale School of Art, Katz won the Henry H. Strong Prize for American Literature in 1965 for his photographic essay of African-Americans in Mississippi taken during the Freedom Summer of 1964. Two beautifully composed images of Oldenburg, in one of which he shown gazing upward alongside what almost certainly appears to be his monumental tube of lipstick.