Torn Notebook
Lincoln, Nebraska
Background History on the Sculpture
This sculpture was commissioned by the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery. This sculpture was created by a team of artists. Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen worked together to create this sculpture. The sculpture was installed on August 20, 1996. The whole process took a little over a year.
The whole sculpture.
A close-up of the Notebook.
Pages blowing away.
Artist's Statements
The artists say that after they were commissioned, the took a road trip from down in Missouri to Lincoln. Along the way, they each recorded observations. Coosje wrote down "lyrical phrases" and Claes just wrote down things that he saw. When they got back to their studio, they saw some torn notebooks laying around and decided to do that. They used their words that they wrote down to put on the pages on the sculpture.
A page and the Notebook.
The whole sculpture.
The bottom half of the Notebook.
My Own Opinion
In my opinion, I think the sculpture is all right. I've never actually seen it in real life though. I think that if they wanted to do a sculpture for Nebraska, they should've done a cow or something. Nebraska is an agricultural state. A notebook doesn't really represent Nebraska.