This photograph is a rare documentation of one of the Washes of 1965 by Swedish American artist, Claes Oldenburg. The Washes were a series of Happenings, or art events of the 1950s and 60s, put on by Oldenburg in the pool of Al Roon’s Health Club in New York City in 1965 and attended by art scensters such as Andy Warhol and Elaine Sturtevant. The Happenings were often impromptu, brief, and therefore not well-documented. Oldenburg’s Washes were mostly unplanned but began with an empty pool where gradually items such as chairs, balloons, clothes, and other miscellaneous objects that happened to be around, such as a 3-foot plastic lizard as seen in the image, were thrown inside. The title was likely a reference to watercolor washes and so there was an emphasis on color and the objects acted as the application of paint. There was also an element of choreography involved where people entered the pool and danced. An attendee recalls the overall effect of the Washes was more like a loosely directed party rather than a highly staged production. The single dream-like photograph captured by the go-to documentarian of the New York City avant-garde, Peter Moore, reads almost like a pop-art or even surreal painting – well-dressed members of New York society look on at a darkly-lit pool where strange objects and people float around together in a sort-of chlorinated melting pot.

Peter Moore was born in London in 1932 and attended Haverford College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1950s. He worked in the darkrooms of Life Magazine and then as an assistant to O. Winston Link before finding his own practice in the 1960s as the unrivaled photographer of the Fluxus movement. He captured the happenings and performances of NYC legends such as Allan Kaprow, Nam June Paik, Joan Jonas, and Yvonne Rainer, among many more. He died on September 20, 1993 of a heart attack and was honored with a posthumous show at Paula Cooper Gallery in 2009.

Claes Oldenburg was born on January 28, 1929 in Stockholm, Sweden. His family relocated to Chicago when Oldenburg was a child. He graduated from Yale University in 1950 and took classes at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1956, he moved to New York City where he was introduced to artists such as Allan Kaprow and Jim Dine, pioneers of the early Happenings. Oldenburg found a reputation as a sculptor in the Pop Art scene and coordinated happenings with fellow artists such as Tom Wesselmann and Carolee Schneemann. Oldenburg moved to Los Angeles in 1963 and later began drawing and creating collages. He returned to sculpture in the 1970s to pursue large-scale public commissions at various institutions which includes his most recognized and acclaimed work, “Spoonbridge and Cherry” (1988) which is a 16 meter steel and aluminum sculpture and fountain that forms a bridge over a pond at the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. Oldenburg has had many solo exhibitions as well as retrospectives at museums all over the world. He received multiple awards throughout his career, a selection including the Wolf Prize in arts in 1989 and the National Medal of Arts in 2000. Many of his sculptures can be seen standing on the lawns of museums and major cities. He currently resides and works in New York.