About the artist itself, he is a Swedish American sculptor, most renowned for his public art installations typically presenting very large replicas of everyday objects.
Sculpture, although very large, often have a interactive capabilities. Aninteractive sculpture, such an original sculpture was a soft lipstick tube to empty unless a participant re-pumped air into it.
In 1974, this sculpture, Lipstick (Ascending) on caterpillars, was redesigned in a way tough aluminum, the giant lipstick being supported vertically on top of tank treads.Was originally installed in the Beinecke Plaza at Yale, it now stands in the courtyard of Morse College.
In the 1960s he became associated with the Pop Art movement and created many so-called events, which were productions related performance art of the time. The name he gave to his own productions was "Ray Gun Theater."
In the middle of freedom of expression around the country and anti-war protests, a group of Yale School of Architecture students and teachers, dubbing themselves the Corporation of Connecticut colossal memory,envisioned the creation of one of the monuments on campus as a statement revolutionary aesthetics and politics. The event celebrated first time installation of Lipstick on Beinecke Plaza in 1969, where hisaggressive presence interrupted the public space. Intended as a platform for public speakers, the sculpture was made of inexpensive materials:wood tracks and a red balloon vinyl, made to be inflated for visibility.Vandalism and deterioration led to the removal of the work which was finally renovated in color-ten steel, aluminum and fiberglass, and installed in Morse College in 1974.
The lipstick on top of the caterpillar concerns the stage of the post-war experienced in the United States.
The world economy has suffered greatly from the war, although the participants of the Second World War have been affected differently. TheUnited States emerged far richer than any other country, the country came the "baby boom" in 1950, its gross domestic product (GDP) per capita the highest in the world and dominated the world economy. The United Kingdom and the United States implemented a policy of industrialdisarmament in West Germany in the years 1945-1948.
On the one hand the war brought women the agony, despair and incurablepain of losing their sons and husbands, rape following all possible kinds ofsexual and physical violence, the need to survive the war brought women the freedom to leave their homes and engage in something more thanhousework.
What happened was that in wartime scarcity is a fact. With the departure ofalmost all men for war, the workforce of the country is extinguished and theempty factories and the economy going to the breakdown . The only way toresolve the situation was to convince women to give up her housework andraising children and go to work.
And women had the opportunity to come to the factories showing his real strength work. However, at the end of wars, with the return of the soldiers,the vast majority having lost his job to work for domestic workers earning a misery to survive. Those who remained in the factories had to submitabsurdly lower wages than men, even performing the same tasks.
Therefore, the lipstick was a way of giving an artistic historical milestone regarding the changes in gender roles.
