The Store 1961

Claes Oldenburg made "The Store" as an environment, a space, more like an event. This is not painting, but I’m still fascinated by the possibilities of what it could be. I think of him in this space, his store, surrounded by all these objects he made by hand. I imagine him wrestling with the materials, building up layers of plaster and paint, letting it drip and sag, allowing the forms to emerge through a process of accumulation. This is the same sort of process I have with painting. It's a back and forth, trial and error, intuition and decision. I bet Oldenburg was thinking about Warhol, mass production, and the commodification of art, but he was also thinking about his own hand, his own touch, his own desire to make something unique and special. What a wonderful tension. Artists are always riffing off of each other. Oldenburg probably looked at Dubuffet and Chicago. It's all a big conversation, an exchange of ideas across time. Painting is an embodied form of expression. It embraces ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations and meanings. There's no right or wrong way to see it.