THE STORE
			After a presentation in 1961 
			at the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York,
			Oldenburg's installation 

					THE STORE
			was fully realized
			in his storefront studio 
			on Manhattan's Lower East Side, 
			where the artist functioned as both
			manufacturer and purveyor of his work.

The Store Poster, 1961.
Three-color offset lithograph printed on cardboard,
28-1/4 x 22-1/8 inches 971.8 x 56.2 cm),
Collection of Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, New York. 

The objects in THE STORE,
	brightly painted plaster wall reliefs and sculptures
		executed in different scales,
 			were inspired by the food, 
				fragments of advertisements, and clothing 
			the artist encountered in the shop windows
		of his neighborhood.

Unlike the slick, mechanical appearance of some Pop art, 
the objects in THE STORE have a deliberately sensuous, 
even vulgar character, their rough surfaces splashed 
and dripped with tempera or commercial enamel paint.

After the original installations, 
Oldenburg continued to make plaster STORE objects until 1963.

"The goods in the stores: clothing, objects of every sort, and the boxes and wrappers, signs and billboards-- for all these radiant commercial articles in my immediate surroundings I have developed a great affection which has made me want to imitate them."

--Oldenburg, 1961

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