{"data":{"id":"425","type":"artwork","attributes":{"id":425,"topgoose_id":6924,"portfolio_id":13540,"tms_id":425,"title":"Soft Toilet","display_artist_text":"Claes Oldenburg","display_date":"1966","accession_number":"79.83a-c","dimensions":"Overall: 56 1/8 × 31 5/16 × 30 1/8 in. (142.6 × 79.5 × 76.5 cm)","medium":"Wood, vinyl, kapok, wire, plexiglass on metal stand and painted wood base","department":"collection","classification":"Sculpture","credit_line":"50th Anniversary Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Victor W. Ganz","is_virtual":false,"is_portfolio":false,"portfolio_tms_id":13540,"portfolio":"Study for a Soft Toilet","edition":null,"publication_info":"","description":"\u003cp\u003eClaes Oldenburg, \u003cem\u003eSoft Toilet\u003c/em\u003e, 1966. Wood, vinyl, kapok, wire, plexiglass on metal stand and painted wood base, overall: 56 1/8 × 31 5/16 × 30 1/8 in. (142.6 × 79.5 × 76.5 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; 50th Anniversary Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Victor W. Ganz 79.83a-c. © Claes Oldenburg\u003c/p\u003e","object_label":"\u003cp\u003eIn 1961, Claes Oldenburg wrote a manifesto asserting his radical artistic position: “I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.” \u003ci\u003eSoft Toilet\u003c/i\u003e, a work that eschews the conventional properties of the art object,\u003ci\u003e \u003c/i\u003edoes not sit on anything—even a pedestal, like much sculpture—but rather hangs from a metal support. Oldenburg emerged as a Pop artist in the early 1960s with his so-called “soft” sculptures of quotidian objects, such as this work. Here he transforms the toilet—a factory-produced, rigid porcelain symbol of modern hygiene—into a hand-sewn, pliable object made of stuffed vinyl. Beginning, as he usually did, with drawings of the fixture, Oldenburg produced three separate iterations of the toilet: a hard version constructed out of cardboard, a soft model of sewn canvas (which he called the “ghost” version), and the vinyl \u003ci\u003eSoft Toilet\u003c/i\u003e. Limp and drooping like an aging human body, \u003ci\u003eSoft Toilet\u003c/i\u003e is endowed with a personality and sense of drama all its own. \u003c/p\u003e","ai_alt_text":"A soft white sculptural toilet with bright blue inner lining sits on a black pedestal.","alt_text":null,"visual_description":null,"on_view":false,"created_at":"2017-08-30T16:11:27.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-02-06T12:00:04.055-05:00","images":[{"id":91997,"url":"https://whitneymedia.org/assets/artwork/425/79_83a-b_vw1_cropped.jpg"}]},"relationships":{"artists":{"data":[{"id":"964","type":"artist"}]}}}}