Oldenburg, Floor Cake

we're once again at the Museum of Modern Art in the room devoted to pop art and we're standing in front of sort of walking around both Oldenburg floor cakes from 1962 and both of us smiling because it's just it's a hilarious work of art that's really funny to me is that when we get up close it really doesn't look like cake at all it looks like actually the giant cherry on top looks like a piece of poop yeah in fact it's the closer you get to it the less appetizing have become it's this piece of canvas it's sort of disgusting it's filthy and it's wonderfully not edible we should just describe it first it's gigantic eight feet long a young woman who was just in the gallery just a moment ago was walking by and said I want to lay down over to sleep on it because it actually kind of looks like a gigantic bed it's preposterous to have food this large but it's not just that it's large because in no way is it an accurate representation of it is a cake in fact it sort of wonderfully floppy and the things that I find incredibly endearing about it is the way it's listing to the right it's just gigantic soft series of pillows but you know cake is a floppy thing it's the messy gooey sensual experience and the squishiness of this reminds who is digging into the frosting and having it smushed down right right but it's not sensual I mean that it is from a distance an association is definitely but as you said then you get up close to it it looks dry and it's fabric and it's sort of badly painted fabric and it's got all these competing associations that are completely at odds with each other it has to me associations of over sweetness the saccharine of American culture burying itself in sweetness and mass-produced food looking at what we as a cultural fetishes right this is 1962 it's incredibly early you think about where pop is at this moment it's just being really born in the US war hole is just creating a square soup cans licking steam is just at the early stages of this cartoon so the pleasures of American consumer culture absolutely sort of undermine really undermine I was a tremendous sense of humor as well but you're right it was a kind of critical aspect here not only critical towards American culture but about what art can and should be there was that great quote Lichtenstein said by the early sixties after I've set Expressionism you could take a rag that had been soaked in pain hang it up on the wall they would be considered art so we need to find something that was still difficult it also raises questions about what representation is supposed to be and and what representation is if you think that representation is something that traditionally it was coming out of the 19th century is meant to refer to in some very direct ways this is really sort of pushing again I mean it identifies what it is but then in so many ways is that it's at odds with what it's meant to represent it is still maintaining central identity a slice of cake but when you look at it in any way other than sir that broad identity it refuses to be that but it also reminds me of is the sort of heroic tradition of sculpture but I thought this hard bronze or marble thing it's this smooshy but not only that it's not as idealized even body it's not this very spot every back now we're looking back up it's hilarious the everyday it's the mundane it's the lowest so it is the lowest broad up to this absurd height