Claes Oldenburg | Geometric Mouse - Scale C

Claes Oldenburg

Geometric Mouse - Scale C

Los Angeles, USA: Gemini, 1971

48.3 x 50.8 x 33 cm.

Edition of 120 initialed, numbered copies [+3 AP]

An anodized aluminum work that conflates the classic film projector (with its two circular film spools) and the face of the world's most iconic mouse, Mickey. 

The original Geometric Mouse was created in 1969 in Oldenburg’s New Haven studio, which he shared with Hannah Wilke. 

"It had been a garment factory," Oldenburg told Martin Friedman, "It was a huge, open space about 200 feet long, and the people who had worked there had written over the entrance to the building, “Welcome to the house of mice.” As it turned out, there were a lot of mice in the house, and after winter set in, there were rats, too, that came in from the fields. I realized that we were really living in a house in which we were intruders. I was a little scared of rats and they were very scared of me, too. At night the mice would dance on the electric cords in the bedrooms. You’d turn the light off and they’re back, dancing. This went on all the time and it was one of the reasons we finally left the place, because there was no way to compete with all this rodent activity. And it didn’t do any good to make images [of them]. We speculated a lot about whether or not making images of mice produced more mice or deterred them—whether they, in some way, got involved in worshipping the images. We hoped to catch them doing that one night, but we never did. They were probably too shy to do that in front of us, too wise."

Oldenburg ,who often referred to the mouse as his alter ego - died on July 18th of this year.