Batcolumn Aluminum Bat
Batcolumn is an outdoor aluminum sculpture in Chicago, Illinois designed by Claes Oldenburg that is the shape of a 101 foot tall baseball bat standing on its knob.
Oldenburg’s Batcolumn demonstrates the artist’s fascination with scale and the changes in the significance of everyday objects when they are enlarged to monumental proportions. Like all of Oldenburg’s monuments, Batcolumn combines a humorous and irreverent attitude toward popular objects with meticulous construction details and handling of scale and proportion. It can alternately be seen as a reference to historical monumental columns, a salute to the American institution of baseball or a tribute to the steel industry.
Claes Oldenburg Creates Batcolumn
Batcolumn was commissioned by the Art in Architecture Program of the United States General Services Administration in conjunction with the National Endowment for the Arts. It was installed April 13, 1977.
Claes Oldenburg: Spirit of the Monument
Claes discusses his Batcolumn at 15:44, but you can hear directly about all of his sculptures in this informative podcast lecture.
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