Short Film: Lipstick (Ascending) On Caterpillar Tracks

The Yale Archives just added this short film about the fabrication and installation of the Claus Oldenburg (Yale ’50) artwork that appeared in front of Commons in May of our Senior Year.   As you watch this 15 minute film, you’ll recognize a number of faces — Coffin, Scully, Brewster, and some patrician (Sam Chauncey?) representing the Yale Corporation.  There are many student faces in the crowd, too — perhaps yours?

The rest of the film is a time capsule: dress, hair styles, open smoking, the sniggering at the “I think this is vaguely erotic” comment overheard.  (Ya think?!)    The name of the film is Colossal Keepsake No. 1, by Peter Hentschel and William Richardson, 1969.

The piece has had an interesting  history.  According to Wikipedia:

An architecture student, Stuart Wrede, and a group of architecture students raised money, under the name of the Colossal Keepsake Corporation of Connecticut, and worked in collaboration with Claes Oldenburg.  It was installed on May 15, 1969, in Beinecke Plaza at Yale University, as a speakers’ platform for anti-war protests.

It had a soft, inflated lipstick section, and wooden treads.

In the autumn of 1969, women were admitted to Yale University. The sculpture deteriorated and was removed by Oldenburg in March 1970.[4] It was redone in weathering steel and fiberglass, and reinstalled at Morse College, on October 17, 1974.

It has been shown at the Guggenheim Museum and National Gallery of Art.