
When I saw these 1963 Claes Oldenburg Soft Fur Good Humors on @toytheatre via @octavio-world‘s tumblr the other day, I thought they were perfect. But then I found out, from Barbara Rose’s 1969 MoMA catalogue, that they’re too small, just 19 x 9 1/2 x 2 inches each, barely the size of a placemat.

Oldenburg said that the inspiration came from seeing the fake fur at a fabric store, so maybe this is all he could get. Within a couple of years, though, he recognized that a Good Humor Bar sculpture should be bigger. He proposed one for the middle of Park Avenue, where the Pan-Am Building eventually went. Too big, tbqh.

In 1972, Oldenburg’s friend Michael Crichton commissioned Oldenburg to make a 3.6m tall version of his 1970 Soft Alphabet Good Humor Bar print, which, frankly, seems like a mistake, both in scale and subject. It looks like when you pop leftover mac & cheese out of the Tupperware. I hope he was handsomely paid, as was whoever sold it to Crystal Bridges.

No, I think these Oldenburg Soft Fur Good Humors should be at least as big as a sleeping bag, but not too big to fit on the roof of your VW. Floor Cone is 3.5m, almost the same size as the Crystal Bridges one, but good. And on the floor.

If each Oldenburg Soft Fur Good Humor was roughly the size of the raft in Titanic. So depending on where you come down in that debate, four on the floor could fit between four and eight people. They would have roughly the same presence in a room as a Chamberlain F*****g Couch. Or two.
This feels like a needed corrective in the material record and a worthwhile work to realize.