Pastry Case, I

Claes Oldenburg, 1961–62 · Gallery 408 · Floor 4

Claes Oldenburg bought the case. The kind they sell at restaurant supply places on the Bowery. Bought the plates, too. The little metal sundae cups. He made the food. Burlap soaked in plaster. Hardware-store enamel, straight from the can. There's a banana split up top. A wedge of blue pie. Down below, something long and brown on a blue plate. Looks like ribs. In a pastry case. Spring of '61. He's making things like this at home, and he's running out of room. Walking to work, he passes an empty store on East Second Street. Sixty bucks a month. Steam heat included. He rents it. In the back, he makes the merchandise. Pastries. Shirts. Girdles. In the front, he sells it. By December, he's open. Posters printed. Ray Gun Manufacturing Company. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, one to six. And he prices things like the other stores in the neighborhood. A strawberry shortcake? Eighty-four ninety-five. A cookie, twenty-nine ninety-five. Comes with the plate. The neighbors mostly stay out. They're pretty terrified. Andy Warhol comes in and buys a shirt. The store lasts two months. He'd planned on one. After all that, he's two hundred and eighty-five dollars in the hole. But before he'd opened the doors, he'd written a list of what he wanted art to do. This was on it. "I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum."

▶ Listen on Listen to Frank

Also in Gallery 408