Strange Eggs

In 1957-1958, after he moved to New York's Lower East Side, Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929) began making collages he has described as "mostly done in an uncontrolled and intuitive dream mode". Made from found, printed photographic imagery, the "Strange Eggs" are enigmatic, surrealistic and vastly different from the Pop art of the 1960s for which he soon became famous. Inspired by the original avant-garde collage artists, these works are characterized by self-contained forms or "eggs" which the artist made by melding cut fragments of photographic reproductions. While many of the pieces are unrecognizable, within the amalgamations some original references are discernible: a piece of pie, the hind leg of a horse, the creased skin of a clenched first, and the texture of concrete. These eighteen collages were first shown in their entirety at the Menil Collection in 2012 and are being published here for the first time, close to actual size and with a short text by Menil curator Michelle White.