Torn Notebook
Lincoln, Nebraska
Background History
Commissioned by the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery in March of 1995. It was created by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. It was installed in August of 1996. It took almost 1 and a half years to be completely completed.
Torn Notebook with pages scattered
I like this one because it shows the loose pages sticking in the ground.
Torn notebook at night
This is my favorite picture because you can tell the words are hollow and you can see the light shining through them.
Painting of the Torn notebook
Here you can see claes and his wife painting the binding of the notebook.
Artists Statement
He thinks it is very clever because on the pages it has things like "barbed wire" and "one ear per stock". His thought process was to come up with something that made people think and wanted to make it look like pages had been blown everywhere by Nebraska's harsh winds at times. The only challenges they met was designing the sculpture which i think probably took the longest.
My Opinion
I think this sculpture is very creative and would have taken a lot of work and patience to come up with. Everytime i see this in lincoln now i will think its pretty cool because i know something about this famous artist who came up with it.