Director, Glenn Lowry: After working on The Street exhibitions, Oldenburg left New York in the summer of 1960 for Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Artist, Claes Oldenburg: One of the nicest things about Provincetown, it has a great beach. And because it sticks out into the Atlantic on a right angle, it collects just about everything that comes up along the shore. I was working as a dishwasher in the evenings, but during the daytime I would go down to the beach and I would gather wood.
To give them the character of the place where I was staying, I wanted it to be patriotic. So I made them into flag scenes. They're like postcards with flags on them only translated into wood.
They represented a new direction because they were somewhat like paintings, but three-dimensional and very rough. This was a development that led to the first stages of The Store.