The Artistic Design and Sociopolitical Significances of a Plug

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Not only does the sculpture Giant Three-Way Plug, Scale A incorporate the American democratic doctrine, but it also illustrates the nation’s booming economic strength and military power during the Cold War race. Made of steel and bronze, the enlarged sculpture of an industrial product suggests the country’s big industry capacity. The two heavy metals, steel and bronze, symbolize the economy’s mighty strength while the practical function of a three-way plug is to provide power. As Linda Downs points out, Oldenburg’s inspiration “originated from with commercial sculpture, such as giant pizza and hamburgers advertisement restaurants, a part of the general American impulse for bigness, power, and impact.”[9] The sculpture he created should measure up to a prosperous country with a thriving economy that produces and reproduces commercial goods at an unprecedented rate.[10] In his work Giant Three-Way Plug, Scale A, he gives the sculpture a reproduction potentiality by incorporating human anatomy into the artwork, as he discloses in his manifesto that he “is for an art that imitates human.”[11] The sockets and prongs of the sculpture resemble male and female reproduction organ while the combination of inlets and outlets hints at the natural process of human reproduction.[12] The reproductive power that the sculpture demonstrates reflects the nation’s robust economy in which popular commercial goods were rapidly produced to meet American consumers’ needs. The high reproduction power across industries leads to the abundance of consumer ready-made commercial goods and outperforms the communist economy guided by the Soviet Union. Besides reproductive or constructive strength, the sculpture also stresses its destructive power. The two prongs sticking out from the heart of the plug bear resemblance to the barrels of a battlefield cannon. In fact, Oldenburg made a comparison between the power plug and the image Ray Gun.[13] The military connotation underlying the sculpture seeks to capture the military mightiness of the nation and empower the nation during its arm race with the Soviet Union, enhancing the sculpture beyond its artistic significance.

The sculpture Giant Three-Way, Scale A fulfills Oldenburg’s personal vision of art because it is a piece that unifies art and life into a powerful, meaningful entity. In his manifesto in 1961, he reveals that “I’m for an art that embroils itself into everyday crap and still comes out on top. I am for an art that is political-erotic-mystical, that does something other than sitting on its ass in a museum. I am for an art that takes the line 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.”[14] The sculpture Giant Three-Way Plug, Scale A achieves these effects successfully in that through the deliberate use of materials, careful arrangement of the object’s positioning, and incorporation of sociopolitical connotations, the artist transforms an ordinary, trivial object into a symbolic artwork imbued with spontaneity, life, vitality, power, and strength. An electric power plug juxtaposed with part of the landscape creates a sense of harmony between the object and nature. The circular shape of the core relates to the round shape of the earth.[15] The color of the metallic prongs changes overtime as it reacts to the changing weather throughout its lifetime. The constancy of such a natural deterioration process injects the object a form of life because the deterioration process due to the natural corrosion resembles human aging process. The sculpture is subjected to both sunshine and rain storm, just as humans experience the high and low in their life. Lastly, the sculpture embodies power, and the underlying constructive potentiality and destructive power generated by its physical features renders the sculpture a politically relevant icon.

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