The Great Ice Cream Robbery

Synopsis:

A two-screen documentary on Claes Oldenburg, filmed in 1970 while the artist was in London for his retrospective at the Tate Gallery. Oldenburg talks as he unpacks his plaster foods and soft sculptures, and proclaims his anti-art views ("Art in my mind is associated with death") as spectators walk round the exhibition at the private view. The camera follows him around London as he meets friends, eats or gives a lecture, himself taking pictures with a Super-8 camera which form an integral part of the film. The conception of one of his projects for colossal monuments - a gigantic pair of knees for the Thames Estuary - is shown as he tracks down a pair of giant cooling towers ("the smoking knees") which caught his eye as his plane landed at Heathrow. There is also a sub-plot about an ice-cream cart parked outside the Tate from which the artist and his friends buy ices, but which is moved on by the police, caught in a traffic jam, and eventually overturned.

Press: The great ice cream robbery press release