Southern California's premier modern and contemporary art museum.

Vija Celmins
Eraser, 1967
Acrylic on balsa wood
6 5/8 x 20 x 3 1/8 inches
Gift of Avco Financial Services, Newport Beach
1979.005

In 1966-67, after creating paintings of carefully chosen objects in her studio, Vija Celmins made four trompe l'oeil sculptures. These gigantic objects--three Pink Pearl erasers and a pencil--are all meticulously crafted from painted balsa wood. Replicas of childhood objects, the eraser has worn edges, and the pencil is a stub. During this early period of her career, Celmins's Pop sensibility referenced such contemporaries as Claes Oldenburg, who also created gigantic, lifelike sculptures of everyday objects. Celmins was interested more in the visual and tactile associations and memories that her objects evoke, however, than in the brash consumerism of Pop Art.