O D D I T I E S tj|tl|in|ca|st
O D D I T I E S
tj|tl|in|ca|st

M I S T A K E   E N E M Y

Sculpture Garden
Washington D.C.

Monday, October 25, 2004

If you're a mistake, be afraid, be very afraid. You can run, you can even hide, but rest assured, this massive typewriter eraser will track you down and rub you out!

Talk about ordinary objects of grand proportions. If you like such odd things, I believe you've come to the right place. Here, at the National Gallery of Art's Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., you'll find 17 strange sculptures. The artists of this wonderful piece, Typewriter Eraser, are Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Together they have collaborated on over 40 Large-Scale Projects. My favorites are Garden Hose (1983), Balancing Tools (1984), and Dropped Bowl with Scattered Slices and Peels (1989).

This oversized eraser is made of stainless steel and cement. The real artifact, while much smaller, is made from materials altogether different. The concept of erasers goes back to the 1560s when graphite was first used. To eliminate boo boos, they used, of all things, a ball of moist bread. I wonder if they ate the bread afterwards? Regardless, it wasn't until much later that condensed latex was discovered from the Hevea brasiliensis tree. It was a wonderful compound, one could easily "rub out" graphite. Hence, from that point forward, the term rubber was coined.

However, natural rubber is problematic. In hot weather it's too soft, and in cold weather it's too hard. Enter stage left, Charles Goodyear. In 1839, he had the brilliant idea; adding sulfur to rubber increases its strength and elasticity. Fast forward to the 1950s, the chemical makeup of natural rubber is finally determined and replicated in the form of synthetic rubber. Yay!

There are all types of erasers these days. Some are flat and rectangular, others are cylindrical atop pencils, and don't forget the novelty erasers that come in different sizes and shapes. Interestingly enough, most pencils made outside of the U.S. don't have erasers,


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