There's nothing more everyday and common than a sandwich... But why does it become so important when done by an artist...?

Giant BLT (Bacon, Lettuce & Tomato sandwich), by Claes Oldenburg (1963)

Técnica: Vinyl over wood base / Measures: 80 x 100 x 75 cm

MoMA Museum - New York

Claes Oldenburg (Stockholm, 1929. Later American citizen) is one of the pioneers of Pop Art (an art movement identified with American popular culture in the 60s). He made large-scale sculptures of daily life objects, usually in soft materials, which made them very realistic: a sandwich, an ice-cream or a hamburger, in exaggerated proportions, looked fun and attractive to the public...

But Oldensburg's sense of humor had a deeper meaning. The huge structure in shiny colours, after a while, becomes overwhelming, as if taking up a space that does not belong to it. Not to mention if one has to actually eat a sandwich that size...

Floor Burger (Giant Hamburger), by Claes Oldenburg (1962)

Measures: 132 x 213 cm
MoMA Museum - New York

It's what happens in the consumer society of today... To show it, the artist chooses a common hamburger, trying to explain that US advertising in the 60s was so exaggerated as a huge hamburger.  Consumption became a matter of life or death and any product could easily become an icon, be it Marilyn Monroe or a Big Mac.

Seis huevos duros sobre un plato, by Eduardo Costa (2004)

Technique: acrylic / Measures: 58 x 85 cm

MNBA

Argentine artist Eduardo Costa also depicts food, but, in his case, he came up with this subject randomly. A bucket of acrylic paint, left opened, dried up, becoming a large tube of paint. This got the artist thinking that a painting could have volume. So, layer after layer of acrylic paint, he gave life to fruits and eggs of paint. Thus, he proposes the public a conceptual operation, in which 3D is no longer something exclusive of a sculpture. However, paint or sculpture, no matter how real, are only just fiction.

To visit... If you have the chance to travel to New York, till August, you can visit the exhibition "Claes Oldensburg: The Street and The Store," at the MoMA.