Claes Oldenburg, Giant BLT (Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato Sandwich), 1963

Narrator: In 2011 at a lecture here at the Whitney, Claes Oldenburg spoke about his approach to scale in works like this one. 

Claes Oldenburg: A lot of my work is very small, a lot of the work is very large, and it seems like it's in the same universe. It's just a matter of how far away you are from it. I think of scale as being a relative thing, and that almost anything that's small can be seen as something that's very big, and vice versa. 

Narrator: By exaggerating a common object’s qualities, Oldenburg transforms our relationship to it. The dimensions and surface of this sculpture are the result of several, careful draft stages.

Claes Oldenburg: What we did is we started with a cardboard model, and then we went into what we call the ghost model. And the idea of the ghost model was that you could study your mistakes so you wouldn't make them in the vinyl. That was the early vinyl, which was really thick and beautiful, and soft and shiny. So when the object came to be made in vinyl, the final object, there had to be a preparation, because vinyl is so delicate that you can't make a mistake when you sew it.