Issue link: http://latinschool.uberflip.com/i/937491
Alumni Feature I n my 13 years at Latin, I was drawn not to art-making, but to language and literature – thanks to the fantastic former middle school teacher Ken Smith, with whom I'm still in touch. Several years ago I rebooted my long journalism career to focus on culture – specically contemporary art. rillingly, studio visits with artists, behind-the-scenes previews with curators and private tours with collectors are now part of my weekly routine. One of the greatest delights of my work has been encountering so many Latin alums. Here are stories of their careers, and how Latin set them up for success. CLAES OLDENBURG '46, artist, and RICHARD OLDENBURG '50, former director of the Museum of Modern Art - New York e brothers Claes and Richard "Dick" – both longtime art world royalty – were born in Stockholm. eir mother was an opera singer, their father a diplomat, who in 1930s, moved the family to Chicago, where he became Swedish consul general. Claes joined the Class of '46 at Latin. In the upper school, he played football and participated in the dramatic club, glee club and student council. He served as editor for three school publications: Latin News, a newsletter for the school community; the Folio, a quarterly journal of student work; and Sigillum, a yearbook. A passion for the written word persisted during his undergraduate years at Yale. But Claes had adored art-making since childhood. So when he returned to Chicago to work for the City News Bureau, he was both a reporter and an illustrator there, and he also studied drawing at the Art Institute of Chicago. Claes moved to New York in 1956, hoping to make a career as painter, but by 1960 he realized that the way to disrupt the dominant art movement of his era – abstract expressionism – was sculpture. He has long been interested in everyday functional objects and sculptural renditions thereof, often in workaday materials. He said in an interview for his 2013 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art: "I am for an art that takes its form from the lines of life itself ... that twists and Alumni in the World of Contemporary Art by Laura van Straaten '86 – New York "I am for an art that takes its form from the lines of life itself… that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips, and is heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself." – Claes Oldenburg '46 28