Claes Oldenburg

Bride Mannikin

1961

In 1961, Claes Oldenburg began working on The Store, a storefront on the Lower East Side of Manhattan where he made and sold his work. He presented himself as both a shopkeeper and a manufacturer, cramming the store windows with brightly painted objects he made by layering plaster-soaked muslin over chicken-wire armatures. These items, including Bride Mannikin, constitute non-wearable clothes and inedible food displayed for sale. Putting into question each object’s function, Oldenburg sought to blur the line between sculpture and commodity, viewer and consumer, and art and life.

Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929, Stockholm; lives and works in New York)
Bride Mannikin, 1961
Muslin soaked in plaster over wire frame, painted with enamel
61 x 37 1/2 x 36 3/4 in.
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
The Panza Collection