MoMA
Posts tagged ‘Claes Oldenburg’
June 26, 2013  |  Artists, Collection & Exhibitions
Revisiting The Store by Claes Oldenburg
Left: Claes Oldenburg. The Store. 1961. Letterpress, composition: 26 9/16 x 20 5/16″ (67.4 x 51.6 cm); sheet: 28 1/4 x 22 1/16″ (71.8 x 56 cm). Mary Ellen Meehan Fund. © 2013 Claes Oldenburg; Right: Claes Oldenburg. Two Girls’ Dresses. 1961. Muslin soaked in plaster over wire frame, painted with enamel, 44 1/2 x 40 3/4 x 6” (113 x 103.5 x 15.2 cm). Private collection. © 1961 Claes Oldenburg. Photo: Gunter Lepkowski

Left: Claes Oldenburg. The Store. 1961. Letterpress, composition: 26 9/16 x 20 5/16″ (67.4 x 51.6 cm); sheet: 28 1/4 x 22 1/16″ (71.8 x 56 cm). Mary Ellen Meehan Fund. © 2013 Claes Oldenburg; Right: Claes Oldenburg. Two Girls’ Dresses. 1961. Muslin soaked in plaster over wire frame, painted with enamel, 44 1/2 x 40 3/4 x 6” (113 x 103.5 x 15.2 cm). Private collection. © 1961 Claes Oldenburg. Photo: Gunter Lepkowski

In 1961 Claes Oldenburg opened a store in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, five years after his official arrival in New York. For two months, Oldenburg hawked commonplace objects out of his storefront: ice cream, oranges, cigarettes, hats, shoes, all things that could be found in surrounding stores, but here, they were specially crafted and singular, specific to the artist and his studio-cum-store. In Claes Oldenburg: Writing on the Side 1956–1969, Oldenburg describes his project neatly:

“The Store, or My Store, or the Ray Gun Mfg. Co., located at 107 East 2nd St., NYC, is eighty feet long and is about ten feet wide. In the front half, it is my intention to create the environment of a store by painting and placing (hanging, projecting, lying) objects after the spirit and in the form of popular objects of merchandise, such as may be seen in store windows of the city, especially in the area where The Store is (Clinton St., for example, Delancey St., 14th St.).

This store will be constantly supplied with new objects, which I will create out of plaster and other materials in the rear half of the place. The objects will be for sale in The Store.
—Claes Oldenburg (1961)

OldenburgWritings_cover

Cover of Claes Oldenburg: Writing on the Side 1956–1969, published by The Museum of Modern Art

The excerpt included above is just one of a variety of collected written works in Writing on the Side, the first compilation dedicated to Oldenburg’s writings. Organized chronologically, the book contains diary entries, poems, notes, statements, and sketches, grouped by chapter with titles like: “Fear of New York 1956–1958,” and “Object Consciousness 1965–1967.” The book serves as a written history of Oldenburg’s artistic presence in the 1960s, much of it composed on a typewriter kept in his studio.

Diary entries and notes preceding the opening of The Store evidence Oldenburg’s investment in the seemingly unexceptional: Oldenburg documents every sandwich, coffee, and beer consumed, the names of cafés and restaurants frequented (many of which no longer seem to exist, upon cursory Google searches) with as much care taken to describe creative ideation and art events. In this way, the writings are an important companion to Oldenburg’s body of work, giving insight into this formative period in his career as well as a unique view into a New York that no longer seems to exist (check out what Oldenburg’s store looks like now).

Oldenburg will perform a reading from Writing on the Side at MoMA at 6:00 p.m. on June 28, followed by a reception and book signing. More information about the event can be found here.

Claes Oldenburg: The Street and The Store is on view through August 5 on the sixth floor in the International Council of The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Gallery.

May 24, 2013  |  Artists, Collection & Exhibitions
Dramaturgy and Gut: Inside Claes Oldenburg’s Mouse Museum
Installation view of Claes Oldenburg: Mouse Museum/Ray Gun Wing at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (April 14–August 5, 2013). Photo by Jason Mandella. © 2013 The Museum of Modern Art

Installation view of Claes Oldenburg: Mouse Museum/Ray Gun Wing at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (April 14–August 5, 2013). Photo by Jason Mandella. © 2013 The Museum of Modern Art

There are people sighing in the Mouse Museum. They are moaning, clucking, and cooing, too.(1) There’s no telling which objects elicit which murmured reaction, since part of Mouse Museum’s potency derives from affinities between things

Oldenburg’s Burgers: Delicious at All Ages
Cover of What is Contemporary Art? A Guide for Kids by Jacky Klien and Suzy Klein, published by The Museum of Modern Art

Cover of What is Contemporary Art? A Guide for Kids by Jacky Klein and Suzy Klein, published by The Museum of Modern Art

MoMA’s current exhibition, Claes Oldenburg: The Street and The Store, celebrates the early years of artist Claes Oldenburg’s extraordinary career, when he experimented with painting and sculpture by reworking the stuff of every day into larger than life objects made with unexpected materials.

March 28, 2013  |  Artists, Collection & Exhibitions, Fluxus
Exhibiting Fluxus: Decomposition Contained in Wait Later This Will Be Nothing: Editions by Dieter Roth

The title of the exhibition Wait Later This Will Be Nothing: Editions by Dieter Roth befits a number of the works on display that are slowly decomposing in front of spectators’ eyes. This post is dedicated to one particular pocket-sized perishable—Roth’s Pocket Room (Taschenzimmer) from MoMA’s Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection. In 1968, Dieter Roth—who challenged the boundaries of printmaking and publishing by integrating cheese, fruit, sausage, chocolate, and other organic materials into the process—released an unlimited edition comprising a banana slice on stamped paper tucked inside of a plastic container small enough to fit into the owner’s pocket.

September 10, 2012  |  Behind the Scenes, Collection & Exhibitions
On Loan: Claes Oldenburg’s Profile Airflow

MoMA is one of a network of museums in New York City and around the globe that often collaborate and support one another to facilitate scholarly and engaging exhibitions. One way that we do this is by loaning artworks to other institutions.

December 8, 2010  |  Artists, Conservation
Conservation of Floor Cake (Part 8)

This is the final blog post for the conservation of Claes Oldenburg’s Floor Cake.

Below you can see the individual layers after cleaning.

November 29, 2010  |  Counter Space, Events & Programs
Educator Journal: In the Making—Food & Art

A small portion of student artwork from the Food & Art class

For this Educator Journal, I asked teaching artist Alan Calpe to reflect upon the last seven weeks of his Food & Art class. Working with a diverse group of NYC teens, Alan has been investigating the Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen exhibition and exploring the various cultural and social connotations that artists bring to the table (so to speak) when addressing the idea of food in their work. The class has been up to their elbows in paper maché, and we’re all eagerly awaiting their final food-based projects.

-Calder Zwicky, Associate Educator, Teen and Community Programs

September 9, 2010  |  Artists, Conservation
Conservation of Floor Cake (Part 7)

Over the course of the past few months the conservation of Floor Cake has been completed.  We would like to use the next posts to describe our treatment and the results.

Before cleaning we consolidated any areas of flaking paint with Lascaux Acrylic Adhesive.

Lascaux was chosen for its low viscosity or ability to wick under paint and mattness upon drying.

We then found that a combination of cleaning techniques yielded the safest and best results. We first vacuumed the entire surface of the cake with a variable-suction vacuum set to very low suction. Then we began with dry cleaning to see just how much dirt and grime we could remove without moisture. Of all of our methods, we found rubber soot sponges to be very gentle and highly effective. We cut the sponges into small, manageable wedges and then lightly rubbed and patted the entire surface overall, including the drop and sprinkle, to remove an initial layer of grime.

May 21, 2010  |  Artists, Conservation
Conservation of Floor Cake (Part 6)

At AIC, Cindy Albertson and Margo Delidow discuss the history and treatment of Floor Cake

We’ve taken a short break from writing about Claes Oldenburg’s iconic Floor Cake sculpture—currently undergoing conservation treatment here at MoMA—to prepare a lecture for last week’s annual meeting of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC), in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Conservators, educators, and scientists gather each year to discuss new types of treatments for works of art and to examine the effects of past treatment. Our presentation focused on the history of Floor Cake and its condition (please see our previous posts), as we have been working to conserve this unique and popular work for the past several months.

March 8, 2010  |  Artists, Conservation
Claes Oldenburg: Conservation of Floor Cake (Week 5)

In our previous posts we discussed the materials and methods used by Claes Oldenburg to create Floor Cake, the artist’s unique and popular piece of painted cake currently undergoing conservation treatment here at MoMA. This week, we investigate the properties of Floor Cake’s surface dirt, to help us prepare an optimal cleaning solution to remove dirt and grime from the sculpture’s painted surface.

Floor Cake disassembled during treatment