In Washington D.C., the National Gallery of Art has an outdoor Sculpture Garden which I frequented with my family whenever we would visit. While looking for material for this week’s article, I saw an image of a sculpture that seemed very familiar. “Typewriter Eraser, Scale X” is a sculpture by Claes Oldenburg in collaboration with his wife, Coosje van Bruggen. The sculpture is located in the National Gallery of Art’s Sculpture Garden, depicting a scaled-up rendition of a typewriter eraser, a forgotten object first manufactured in the 1920s for the purpose of erasing mistakes made on a typewriter. While the object lacks cultural distinction, its unique design is what inspired Oldenburg to create a dynamic rendition of the now obsolete invention. Pop artists have been exploring consumer objects for decades in an attempt to challenge traditional artistic values by depicting objects with modern cultural traction. However, Oldenburg’s choice of the typewriter eraser is unconventional; not only was the typewriter eraser already obsolete when Oldenburg fabricated the sculpture in 1999, but it holds little significance or recognition for the newest generation.
While it may be easy to overlook the substance of Oldenburg and van Bruggen’s sculpture, it is important to understand the attachment an artist has to their work. Oldenburg chose a typewriter eraser as a subject for his sculpture because it brought back childhood memories of times he spent playing in his father’s office, as well as the times he utilized it for his prints and drawings. His emotional attachment to such a mundane object illustrates the importance of popular culture and industry to the children of the 20th century. Whenever I ask my parents about their childhoods growing up in Russia and Ukraine, they talk about how the lack of Western influence shaped the development of modern culture in Europe. They talk about their knockoff tennis shoes, listening to Italian rock music, and the Russian cartoons they loved to watch. These symbols and objects shaped some of their best childhood memories and what they remember most about their experiences prior to coming to the United States.
While I may not understand the importance of the typewriter eraser or my mom’s tennis shoes, Oldenburg and van Bruggen’s sculpture still holds significance to me. It acts as a totem for my childhood memories; the trips I took to Washington, D.C., with my family and friends come rushing back whenever I lay eyes on it. To think I have probably walked past that sculpture upwards of twenty times and still had no idea it was meant to depict an actual object speaks to its uncanny recognizability. It certainly is overwhelming to remember what once was.
Unfortunately, in more recent years, the Pop Art genre has been plagued by its use as a vessel for consumerism and materialistic gain. Regardless, I believe that “Typewriter Eraser, Scale X” effectively illustrates the unrecognized importance of Pop Art. Works such as that of Oldenburg and van Bruggen not only evoke emotion in those that connect with the cultural significance of the depicted object, but also symbolically represent the progression of time and the development of society as we know it. While the typewriter erases may have been forgotten, Oldenburg and van Bruggen’s sculpture will stand on in all its grandeur, acting as a time capsule for those who seek to push back the veil of conventional ideology and modern culture.
