Claes Oldenburg's Store

(linked from page 11 of the Pre-Pop section/ footnotes for this page only are at the bottom of the page)

Claes Oldenburg's downtown "Store" was the second version of his store. The first version had taken place as part of a group exhibition at the Martha Jackson Gallery from May 25 - June 23, 1961.

In Popism, Warhol, via Pat Hackett, also mentioned discussing with Emile De Antonio a previous Oldenburg exhibition - "Ray Gun." (1)

The show featured two installations - Oldenburg's The Street and Jim Dine's The House. The show ran from January 30 to March 17, 1960 at the Judson Gallery and was accompanied by a series of comic books. The comic books were designed by Oldenburg and Dine as well other artists who were associated with the Judson - Robert Whitman, Dick Higgins, Dick Tyler and Red Grooms. (2)

The cover of the first issue of Ray Gun comics (1960) designed by Jim Dine

Oldenburg and Dine's exhibition created art out of street detritus. The exhibition brought the outside in. At his later "store," Oldenburg sold his soft sculptures of food and household objects in a store-like environment. The boundaries between art and life were blurring.

1. Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett, Popism: The Warhol Sixties (NY: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1980), p. 11.

2. Barbara Haskell, Blam! The Explosion of Pop, Minimalism and Performance 1958 - 1964 (exh. cat.) (NY: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1984), p. 110, fn. 38.