Soft Drainpipe - Blue (Cool) Version 1967

This ‘Soft Drainpipe - Blue (Cool) Version’ is a piece made by Claes Oldenburg and currently resides in the Tate Modern. The artist uses colour here, but the colour is muted and matte. It’s a sculpture that collapses into itself, yet it also looms out at the viewer in an uncanny way. A deflated drainpipe is a strange and kind of hilarious object to make monumental, but it becomes something else, something abject even, when it’s rendered in this drooping and tactile form. It’s like Oldenburg is playing with the idea of the readymade, taking something from the everyday but, instead of presenting it as is, he remakes it with soft materials. This complete transformation of material removes all possibility of function from the object. There’s a real conversation happening here, between Oldenburg and Duchamp and the whole history of art in the 20th century.