Claes Oldenburg, 1961 “Documents from the Store” reprinted in Art in Theory: 1900-2000. ed. Harrison and Wood pp. 743-747
“If I could only forget the notion of art entirely. I really don’t think you can win. Duchamp is ultimately labeled art too. The bourgeois scheme is that they wish to be disturbed from time to time, they like that, but then they envelop you, and that little bit is over, and they are ready for the next. There even exists within the b. values a code of possibilities for disturbance, certain ‘crimes’ which it requires some courage to do but which will eventually be rewarded within the b. scheme. B. values are human weakness, a civilization built on human weakness, non-resistance. They are disgusting. there are many difficult things to do within the b. values, but I would like to find some way to take a totally outside position. Bohemia is bourgeois. The beat is bourgeois – their values are pure sentimentality – the country, the good heart, the fallen man, the honest man, the gold-hearted whore etc. They would never thing f. ex. of making the city a value of good.
Possibly art is doomed to be bourgeois. Two possible escapes from the bourgeois are 1. aristocracy and 2. intellect, where art never thrives too well. There again I am talking as if I want to create art outside b. values. Perhaps this can’t be done, but why should I even want to create ‘art’ – that’s the notion I’ve got to get rid of. Assuming that I wanted to create some thing what would that thing be? Just a thing, an object. Art would not enter into it. I make a charged object (‘living’). An ‘artistic’ appearance or content is derived from the object’s reference, not from the object itself or me. These things are displayed in galleries, but that is not the place for them. A store would be better (Store – place full of objects). Museum in b. concept equals store in mine” p. 744
“I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.
I am for an art that grows up not knowing it is art at all, an art given the chance of having a starting point of zero.
I am for an art that embroils itself with the everyday crap and still comes out on top.
I am for an art that imitates the human, that is comic, if necessary, or violent, or whatever is necessary.
I am for an art that ties its form from the lines of life itself, that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips, and is heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself.” p. 744-5
Oldenberg presents some of the same challenges identified in other authors – the dangers of being identified as ‘art’, particularly the depoliticiziation into the commodity form that occurs in bourgeois capitalism. The label ‘art’ – like the label ‘politics’ – imposes a set of confined meanings on the work. Oldenberg wants to find an outside position that cannot reduce back to the co-ordinates of capitalism, by developing an object-creation that mirrors and venerates real life. The measure of success is the difficulty of commodification into a ‘store’ – even if this non-bourgeois art requires violence or stupidity.
The question reading this bit of Oldenberg raises is the idea of an ‘outside position.’ It’s telling that his radical position – ‘making the city a value of good’ – is now a key engine for capitalism in the form of gentrification and ‘urban’ culture (from rap to sneakers to graff artists in galleries). It shows how every supposed leap outside of meaning gets drawn back into the ideological coordinates despite the efforts a producer may take to erase the traces of other symbolic systems.
I too am increasingly dubious of O’s desire to “find some way to take a totally outside position, ” on two grounds: 1) As O. pretty much understands “outside” is very hard to maintain; he points back to the Betas but he might as well be pointing at the Conceptual Artists et al of the 1960s 2) If you are completely outside it very well might meant that your art speaks of nothing and to no one — except yourself. Not much hope for social change there.