Claes Oldenburg, who made art of massive size and style, spent his formative years in Chicago

CHICAGO — Not everyone liked the things that artist Claes Oldenburg made, which were gigantic sculptures of such commonplace items as a hamburger, a lipstick case, clothespin, ice cream cone, pretzel, ironing board, teddy bear, aspirin, and a very, very big bat in Chicago.

Before the bat was built, the late Tribune architecture critic Paul Gapp referred to the artist as “a veteran put-on man and poseur,” railing that he was “about to rip off taxpayers for a $100,000 baseball bat.” After it was built in 1977, my former colleague, Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Blair Kamin, called