In the fall of 1968, a group of Yale students and faculty calling itself the Colossal Keepsake Corporation approached Swedish-born American Pop artist Claes Oldenburg about creating a monumental public sculpture on Yale’s campus.
Oldenburg, a Yale alumnus known for his whimsical sculptures of everyday objects, embraced the idea. Waiving any fee for his services, he produced a characteristically fanciful design: a gigantic tube of orange-colored lipstick set on caterpillar tracks.
The corporation, composed of graduate students in art and architecture and supported by architectural historian Vincent Scully, another faculty member, a Yale alumnus, and Oldenburg himself, raised $5,000 in donations to pay for the materials needed to build the sculpture. The sculpture’s components were fabricated at cost at Lippincott, Inc., a North Haven-based company that has helped artists build large-scale public sculptures since 1966.
On May 15, 1969, Oldenburg and the students installed the piece, “Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks,” on Beinecke Plaza as a surprise “gift” to the university. It stood on the plaza for about a year before the artist had it removed. A refurbished version of the sculpture returned to campus in 1974 as a gift to the Yale University Art Gallery and was installed in the courtyard of Morse College, one of Yale’s 14 residential colleges, where it remained as a long-term loan for most of the next half century.
Now, following a fresh makeover, the iconic sculpture has been moved to the Yale Art Gallery’s sculpture garden, improving public access to the campus landmark.
A lipstick on tank treads
In the 1960s, Oldenburg (a member of Yale’s Class of 1950) was known for creating “soft sculptures” — oversized pieces composed of pliable materials like vinyl and cloth that transformed hamburgers, toilets, and other everyday objects into bizarre, funny forms. The artist, who died in 2022, had drawn sketches for monumental public sculptures made of rigid materials, including a towering Good Humor ice cream bar that would span Park Avenue in Manhattan and a giant banana in the center of Times Square, but had never realized one until the Colossal Keepsake Corporation came calling.
The project was the brainchild of Stuart Wrede, then a graduate student in architecture at the Yale School of Art and Architecture, as it was then known. Wrede was inspired by an interview he had recorded with the philosopher and social critic Herbert Marcuse. During the conversation, Marcuse said that it would be a revolutionary act if Oldenburg’s visions for a colossal banana or ice cream bar were made real.
“I think it would be one of the most bloodless ways to bring radical change,” Marcuse said in an excerpt from the conversation that was published in a 1969 volume of “Perspecta: the Yale Architectural Journal,” for which Wrede was an editor.
While protests about civil rights and the Vietnam War roiled Yale and campuses nationwide, the project was not intended to be overtly political, explained Samuel Callaway ’64, ’69 M.Arch., an architecture student at the time and one of the project’s organizers.
“The ‘Lipstick’ was definitely not a political commission; our intentions had almost nothing to do directly with the war or with military symbolism, although the subject of war was obviously on everyone’s mind at that time,” Callaway explained in the catalogue to “The Lipstick Comes Back,” a 1974 exhibition at the Gallery marking the sculpture’s return to campus.
Oldenburg shared several ideas with the Colossal Keepsake Corporation, including a design that featured of giant tube of toothpaste being stepped on. The corporation unanimously selected the lipstick design.
“The 24-foot-tall lipstick on tank treads perfectly captured the combination of military aggression and seductive erotic commercialism that characterized America at the time, in addition to displaying an in-your-face critique of its conservative surroundings,” Wrede said in a 2022 piece in The Architect’s Newspaper, an influential publication covering issues related to architecture and design.
Oldenburg got the idea for the lipstick design while he was walking around campus pondering potential sites to place a sculpture, the artist explained in the 1974 exhibition catalogue, which was written by Susan P. Casteras ’73, ’75 M.Phil., ’77 Ph.D., then a graduate student in the history of art, who had curated the exhibition.
“An orangish-red balloon fluttered from a nearby car antenna on the street,” he said. “Standing back somewhat, I saw it looming on a huge, vivid scale against the stern atmosphere of classical architectural and modernism. It was then that the idea of the lipstick occurred to me.”
Typical to Oldenburg’s style, the sculpture presents more than simply a witty critique of consumer culture.
“Given the fraught period in American history in which Oldenburg’s ‘Lipstick’ was created, it is not surprising that so many people have interpreted the work to be as much a response to the violent undercurrents and actions in the U.S. and abroad as a commentary on issues of femininity and masculinity,” said Keely Orgeman, the Seymour H. Knox, Jr., Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Gallery. “Though the sculpture remains one of the most iconic in 20th-century art, I think it’s also important to remember its place in Yale’s and New Haven’s histories,” “We’re glad to have done our part at the Gallery (as is our mission) to ensure ‘Lipstick’ lives on.”
A surprise gift
Art performances called “happenings” — loosely structured theatrical pieces — were a key aspect of Oldenburg’s practice in the 1960s. The unveiling of the Yale sculpture was an example.
The sculpture’s components were driven from Lippincott’s workshop to campus on flatbed trucks. More than 500 people gathered as the students erected the sculpture in the center of Beinecke Plaza in March 1969. The crowd erupted into “thunderous” applause when the “Lipstick’s” vinyl orange tip was inflated, the Yale Daily News reported the next day.
Setting up Claes Oldenburg’s “Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks.”
Once the sculpture was built, Oldenburg presented a deed to it to Reuben Holden, then secretary of the university, with terms that restricted the monument’s location to a clearly defined location on the plaza.
Five years later, Henry Chauncey Jr., who by then was the university secretary, explained the administration’s reaction to the gift.
“There was a lot of confusion and downright mystery about who we were dealing with; the ‘Lipstick’ was a surprise to us and the people who planned it never fully identified themselves either …” Chauncey said in the 1974 exhibition catalogue. “The second problem was the restricted nature of the gift. The university always has to consider carefully any gifts with restricted terms; they may seem to be worth any risks at the present, but we have to think about the consequences of accepting a gift and its impact or meaning in the future — 25 or 100 years later.”
Soon after the sculpture’s unveiling, its vinyl tip was replaced with a rigid one. The mechanism to inflate the original soft tip was faulty, Oldenburg told Casteras.
“It was supposed to lose air slowly and have a pump attached to it so that passersby could pump up the stick, if they decided it needed it,” Oldenburg said. “This also worked with my concept of the lipstick monument as a platform for speechmaking. Someone who wanted to make a speech would announce himself by pumping up the ‘Lipstick.’ We didn’t have time or money enough for this refinement. The soft version was used for the installation and, a week later was replaced with a metal one. The monument then changed from a comical monument to a rather classical looking one.”
The sculpture stood on Beinecke Plaza for several months, serving as a stage for protests and a campus bulletin board. Over that period, it was plastered with posters and marred by graffiti. The sculpture’s plywood treads warped from exposure to the elements. With little fanfare, Oldenburg had it removed to Lippincott’s workshop, where it remained for several years.
In 1971, Scully and art historian Sheldon Nodelman approached Alan Shestak, then-director of the Gallery, about having the “Lipstick” returned to campus. Oldenburg was receptive to the idea, and Lippincott worked with the artist to refabricate the sculpture.
In 1974, the refurbished monument — its wooden elements replaced by steel — was donated to the Gallery and installed in the courtyard of Morse College, where Scully was head of college.
Preserving the artist’s vision
Over the years, the sculpture periodically has required conservation treatments as a result of being displayed outdoors and exposed to sunlight and precipitation. Prior to the most recent restoration, the sculpture was last treated between 2009 and 2010, when Oldenburg was alive and available for consultation, explained Anne Turner Gunnison, the Alan J. Dworsky Conservator of Objects at the Gallery.
Since the sculpture’s last treatment, sun exposure had caused its painted surfaces, especially on the lipstick, to fade and lose their sheen. The orange paint of the tip was starting to peel. The black paint of the base and treads was scuffed. In places, the deteriorating paint had allowed moisture to infiltrate underlying steel and fiberglass, Gunnison said.
“Our goal was to restore the sculpture’s visual coherence — staying as close as possible to Oldenburg’s vision — and support its long-term preservation while it’s displayed outdoors,” she said.
The conservators had a key resource at their disposal: the sculpture’s fabricators at Lippincott. They worked closely with Donald Lippincott, the firm’s founder, and his brother, Alfred, as well as with specialists in prepping and painting metal and fiberglass. They carefully selected paints that would match the original colors and stand up well to the weather.
“We’re so fortunate to be able to work with the Lippincotts, who had worked intimately with Oldenburg on the ‘Lipstick’ and many other large-scale projects,” Gunnison said. “Their advice was invaluable.”
During the makeover, which was supported by a Bank of America Art Project Conservation Grant, the sculpture was deinstalled and its components transported offsite for treatment. The steel base and caterpillar tracks were sent to Welding Works in Madison, Connecticut, and the vertical portion to CT Composites in South Windsor. (Lippincott closed its fabrication workshop in 1994 but continues to consult with artists on fabrication and conservation.) Additional conservation work was completed at the Collection Studies Center on Yale’s West Campus.
The restored sculpture now stands in the Gallery’s Margaret and Angus Wurtele Sculpture Garden.
“Installing the sculpture at the Gallery enhances our ability to care for it,” Gunnison said. “But it also allows the public greater opportunity to come and enjoy Oldenburg’s iconic sculpture.”
