Poem for Store

On June 3, 2009 John Brodie opened Store for a Month at the SE corner of SE Division and 12th in Portland, Oregon and stocked it with art by Portland artists. On December 1, 1961 Claes Oldenburg opened The Store in cooperation with Green Gallery at 107 East 2nd Street in New York City.

The phone number of The Store was ORegon 4-0380.

“The original idea of The Store was a simple one—to fill a space with objects such as those in any kind of store, but this was not satisfactory as I proceeded. The problem became how to individualize the simple subjects, how to surprise them—fragmentation, gigantism, obsession. My piece is called a store because like a store it is a collection of objects randomly placed in space.” Claes Oldenburg’s Store Days, Something Else Press, 1967.

This morning I found two of Oldenburg’s poems in Richard Kostelanetz’ Text-Sound Texts. Surprise. But of course, “I am for an art…” is poem as artist statement, isn’t it?

“I am for the art of things lost or thrown away, coming home from school. I am for the art of cock-and-call trees and flying cows and the noise of rectangles and squares. I am for the art of crayons and weak grey pencil-lead, and grainy wash and sticky oil paint, and the art of windshield wipers and the art of the finger ona cold window, on dusty steel or in the bubbles on the sides of a bathtub.”

it ends:

“I am for U.S. Government Inspected Art, Grade A art, Regular Price art, Yellow Ripe art, Extra Fancy art, Ready-to-eat art, Best-for-less art, Ready-to-cook art, Fully cleaned art, Spend Less art, Eat Better art, Ham art, pork art, chicken art, tomato art, banana art, apple art, turkey art, cake art, cookie art.”

For fun, you could download Injun & Other Histories, a Great Bear Pamphlet from Something Else Press from ubuweb.com.

POSTED: June 11th, 2009 | AUTHOR: lisa | FILED UNDER: art | TAGS: claes oldenburg, john brodie, portland artists, store for a month, visual art | No Comments »

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