Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
.
DANA MILLER: This is "Giant BLT,"
bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich,
by Claes Oldenburg from 1963.
The piece is actually made up
of discrete smaller sculptures
of lettuce, tomato, and bacon and bread.
So each time you install it,
you actually have to go through the act
of creating the bacon, lettuce,
and tomato sandwich, and figuring out
which pieces to put on in which order.
If you can actually tilt it a little bit
so that the seam is more lined up...
Yeah.
A little more lettuce hanging over.
We worked with photographs
of the earliest installations
we could find, so that we're using
sort of what we would imagine
was Oldenburg's installation.
I might switch things around.
Graham, you stay where you are.
Caitlin, can you flip that over?
There's always this sort of
sense of balance,
balancing the bacon slices
that are very sort of, you know,
curvy and sensuous,
with the soft lettuce,
which is actually kind of
made like a bed curtain.
It looks like you're making a bed
and placing the bed curtain
along the edges.
So each time it's a little bit different,
and that's very important to the artist,
that he makes his sculpture
very often in pieces, piles,
or accumulations of things
so that there has to be
some sense of interpretation,
there has to be some participation
on the part of the owner
in creating their own version
of the sculpture.
All right, so then olive on this side.
.
Maybe a little less,
so turn it a little more this way.
Yeah.
This is just a really fun piece
to work on.
I mean, I've installed it
probably half a dozen times,
and, you know, my only regret is that
I can't get in there and do it myself.
But I have to say, I have never looked at
a BLT sandwich the same again.
And when I have one in a restaurant,
I actually pay attention
to how they've made it,
the sequence of elements,
which is, I think,
part of what Oldenburg's work is about--
it makes you look at your world
with fresh eyes.
.