CLAES OLDENBURG / Store Days

Claes Oldenburg
Store Days, 1967
Hardcover, first Edition
Something Else Press, New York

Condition: Very Good. Minimal wear; the book remains crisp and well preserved. Original Store business card present and in pristine condition.

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Store Days is a wonderfully eccentric document of one of the most important experiments in early Pop art: Claes Oldenburg’s The Store, the artist’s notorious Lower East Side storefront at 107 East 2nd Street. Opened in 1961, The Store blurred the line between shop, studio, installation and performance, filling a deliberately makeshift commercial space with hand-made versions of everyday commodities — food, clothing, furniture and consumer goods rendered in plaster, cardboard and other humble materials.

The book captures this world through Oldenburg’s own texts alongside an energetic mix of black-and-white and colour photographs and illustrations. Produced with the aid of poet and Fluxus figure Emmett Williams, with photographs by Robert R. McElroy, it has the feel of an artist’s scrapbook or visual archive rather than a conventional monograph, reflecting the anarchic spirit of the project itself.

A particularly great feature of this copy is the original business card for “The Store,” at 107 E. 2nd St., preserved in pristine condition in its original glassine pocket pasted to the front of the book. The surviving card is a small but fantastic piece of Oldenburg ephemera, giving the publication a direct physical connection to the legendary storefront.

An essential early Oldenburg publication and a highly desirable document of the artist’s formative New York period.