Claes Oldenburg: Store Days: Documents from The Store, 1961, and Ray Gun Theater, 1962 (1967)

““I’d like to get away from the notion of a work of art as something outside of experience, something that is located in museums, something that is terribly precious,” Oldenburg declared. In 1961 he presented a new body of work whose subject matter he had culled from the clothing stores, delis, and bric-a-brac shops that crowded the Lower East Side. The earliest Store sculptures, which debuted in spring 1961 at the Martha Jackson Gallery, at 32 East Sixty-Ninth Street, are wall-mounted reliefs depicting everyday items like shirts, dresses, cigarettes, sausages, and slices of pie. Oldenburg made them from armatures of chicken wire overlaid with plaster-soaked canvas, using enamel paint straight from the can to give them a bright color finish. At the gallery, the reliefs hung cheek by jowl, emulating displays in low-end markets.

In December 1961, Oldenburg opened The Store in the rented storefront at 107 East Second Street that served as his studio, which he called the Ray Gun Manufacturing Company. A fully elaborated manifestation of the project that he had begun months earlier, The Store conflated two disparate types of commerce: the sale of cheap merchandise and the sale of serious art. Oldenburg packed more than one hundred objects into the modestly sized room, setting previously exhibited reliefs alongside new, primarily freestanding sculptures. Everything was available for purchase, with prices starting at $21.79 up to $499.99. After The Store closed, on January 31, 1962, Oldenburg used the space to stage a series of performances collectively titled Ray Gun Theater.” (Source)

Selected by Claes Oldenburg and Emmett Williams
Photographs by Robert R. McElroy
Publisher Something Else Press, New York, 1967
152 pages
via penfold

2013 exhibition at MoMA

WorldCat

PDF (83 MB)

Art & Language, 1966-1975 (1975)

Collection of essays by Art & Language published on the occasion of their exhibition at Museum of Modern Art Oxford in September 1975.

Publisher Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, UK, 1975
51 pages
via penfold

Commentary: Gívan Belá (His Voice 2016, CZ).

WorldCat

PDF

If You Lived Here: The City in Art, Theory, and Social Activism: A Project by Martha Rosler (1991)

“This volume documents the present crisis in American urban housing policies and portrays how artists within the context of neighborhood organizations, have fought against government neglect, shortsighted housing policies and unfettered real estate speculation. Through essays, photographs, symposiums, architectural plans and the reproduction of works from the series of exhibitions organized by Martha Rosler, the book serves a number of functions: it’s a practical manual for community organizing; a history of housing and homelessness in New York City and around the country; and an outline of what a humane housing policy might encompass for the American city.” (from the back cover)

With contributions by Christine Benglia Bevington, Marie Annick Brown, Andrew Byard, Cenén, The Chinatown History Project, Clinton Coalition of Concern, Rosalyn Deutsche, Dan Graham and Robin Hurst, Alexander Kluge, The Mad Housers, Tony Masso, The Nation, Richard Plunz, William Price, Yvonne Rainer, Mel Rosenthal, Allan Sekula, Camilo José Vergara, and Dan Wiley.

Edited by Brian Wallis
First published by Bay Press, Seattle, and Dia Art Foundation, New York, 1991
First New Press printing, 1999
Discussions in Contemporary Culture series, 6
ISBN 156584498X, 9781565844988
x+312 pages
via Dubravka

Artist’s archive project, 2009

Artist
Publisher (New Press)
Publisher (Dia)
Exhibition
WorldCat

PDF (75 MB)