Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929)

Yellow Girl's Dress

Details

Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929)
Yellow Girl's Dress
signed with initials and dated 'C.O. 1961' (on the reverse)
muslin soaked in plaster over wire frame, painted with enamel
31 x 32 x 6 in. (79 x 81.4 x 15.1 cm.)
Executed in 1961

Provenance

The Store, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owners in 1961

Literature

C. Oldenburg, Store Days: Documents from The Store (1961) and Ray Gun Theatre (1962), New York, 1967, p. 33, inventory no. 60 (illustrated in color, p. 55).
ed. G. Celant, exh. cat., Claes Oldenburg: An Anthology, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1995, pl. 51 (illustrated in color).

Exhibited

New York, Martha Jackson Gallery, Environments, Situations, Spaces, May-June 1961.
Dallas, Museum for Contemporary Arts, 1961, April-May 1962.
Princeton, University Art Museum, 1973-March 1998 (on loan).

Lot Essay

First seen at Martha Jackson Gallery, and then in May 1961 when Oldenburg moved his Ray Gun Manufacturing Company into a store front at 107 East Second Street, these plaster-soaked strips of muslin, painted in violent hues and shaped into recognizable objects, became a living, breathing part of the New York art world.

"The Store is filled with pieces of clothing, from stockings, pants, and garter belts to shoes, shirts and panties. It is a hymn to the confusion between body and object, between drapery and nude. Through color, the artist reveals the impetuous, vibrant thrill of visual desire, making the clothing shine like bodies in the sun." (ed. G. Celant, op. cit., p. 24)

(fig. 1) The Store showing the present work, 1961
(Photograph by Robert McElroy)