Geometric Mouse, Scale C

Claes Oldenburg's Statement on Geometric Mouse (Claes Oldenburg: The Multiples Store, 1996, pp. 40-41):

'For the poster of my exhibition in Los Angeles at the Dwan Gallery in October 1963, I gave in to the inevitable and did a series of drawings based on the head of Mickey Mouse. The forms were distorted but still soft, curvy, and humanized like the original. Two years later, I reduced the components to a simple schematic form, almost like a children's drawing, but more geometrical. This form, which somewhat resembles the profile of an early film camera, was suitable to architecture. The eyes became windows and, in 1965, I started drawings for a building in the shape of the geometric mouse head to house my "museum of popular art," which was later to become the Mouse Museum. The hard-edged, symmetrical geometric mouse head, gazing vacantly in one or another state of detachment, is far removed from the Disney version. In 1969, I designed a geometric mouse head in black intended for T-shirts to be worn by students at the new California School of the Arts. Since the school was founded by the Disney family, I thought the geometric mouse head might become an anarchistic emblem of student independence, but the idea did not catch on.

The geometric mouse head has been put to many other uses, from a mask in the performance Moveyhouse (1965) to the letterhead of my exhibition at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 1965—the latter use making it a kind of alter ego.

In 1969, partly because of the adaptability of the form to large-scale metal fabrication, the geometric mouse head became the second large work, after Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks, to be made at Lippincott, Inc., in North Haven, Connecticut. The work was then formally titled Geometric Mouse, the first of a large family of mice that were measured according to the diameter of their ears. The ubiquity and reproductive capacity of mice made them a perfect symbol of multiplicity. The simple form of the Geometric Mouse was also suitable to different scales, some identified with typical objects: for example, Scale B is the size of a tricycle, Scale C is like a skull, (memento mori) or a handheld camera (which it also resembles in its color, texture, and details). Scales B, C and D have jointed ears, eyelids, and noses that enable the Geometric Mouse head to be placed in different ways, though preferred or "classical" position is recommended. The loose chain that connects the tear disk to the eye adds to the possible variations. As the Geometric Mouse sculptures become smaller in scale, their number increases. The smallest, Scale D, is the most perishable of the species, and is thus produced in an unlimited edition.'

Anodized aluminium, 1971, signed and numbered by incision on 'tear' disk, from the edition of 120 (there are also 3 artist's proofs), published by Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles, overall: 483 x 508 x 330 mm (19 x 20 x 13 in.)

Multiples Store 14, Multiples in Retrospect 14