The top photo shows one of my favourite installations at the Sculpture Garden of the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. It is a giant typewriter eraser by Clares Oldenburg. I have completely forgotten about this obsolete piece of stationery. For the uninitiated (read - too young to know), this eraser, made of a rougher type of rubber, is used to rub off mistakes in typewritten letters and words. The brush is used to brush off the debris from the eraser and the paper, and typewriter ribbon. The sculpture represents a giant falling eraser that has just alighted, the bristles of the brush turned upward in a graceful, dynamic gesture. So you see, sculptures need not be hard concrete public monuments, but can be everyday objects , including obsolete objects remembered from childhood.
Over at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York, there is also a piece of art, which is simply a typewritten page, consisting of 2 parts, a text, and a graphic art created from the keystrokes of the typewriter. It used to be quite popular during the early days of the computer to do such art pieces. I remember a Mona Lisa that was circulated among my university friends.
Both these 2 pieces, one a large constructed monster, the other a piece of paper, stem from the simple typwriter. Same source of inspiration, but very different products.
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