1969

Miniature Soft Drum Set

American (born Sweden), 1929 - 2022

With its worn folds, frayed edges, and canvas skins that gently sag at their seams, Miniature Soft Drum Set appears well broken in, despite having never made a sound. Claes Oldenburg, a prominent Pop artist and master of soft sculpture, first sought to visualize a soft drum set in 1967. Having found it “impossible to imagine and therefore to draw,” he designed a pattern to be silkscreened onto canvas and sewn together. Like real drum sets, Oldenburg’s sculpture may be reassembled in various configurations. In this way, the work can take an endless multiplicity of unique forms.