Feasible Monument to be Scattered in a City Park: Fragments of Nightstick Contact

This is one of Claes Oldenburg’s preparatory projects for large-scale outdoor sculpture, many of which, including this one, were never realized. This work memorializes the violence that took place throughout the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The con- vention was contentious, inside and out: the Democratic Party fell apart over delegates’ conflicting stances on US military involvement in the Vietnam War, while police attacked protesters in the streets. Oldenburg himself was present and recalled being clubbed as he walked through a police line.

The ceramic shards here represent a police officer’s shattered nightstick. Of this work, the artist said, “Each monument concerns the contact of a hard subject with a soft one—nightstick and flesh, the flesh often wrapped in clothing.” Oldenburg made the fragments by hitting a cast stick against wet, cloth-covered plaster, a process he described as a form of reenactment.