Claes Oldenburg Ray Gun Collection
New York: various publishers, 1960-1968. Mimeograph, offset, and holograph. 25 original Ray Gun artist’s mimeographs; second edition of "Store Days: Documents from The Store (1961) and Ray Gun Theater (1962)," with the business card in glassine envelope on the front free-endpaper; and Oldenburg’s copy of "The Floating Bear," issue #19, postmarked and with his printed address label, featuring holograph illustrations and inscriptions in Oldenburg’s hand. From 2 x 4 ½ to 11 1/8 x 8 5/8 in. All very good. Item #8136
A remarkable collection of early Claes Oldenburg material, containing the complete works produced for his first Happening, with two copies of the exceedingly rare Ray Gun Poems and previously unrecorded works.
This collection gathers rare mimeograph prints and manuscripts produced by Oldenburg and Jim Dine in 1960 and 1961 under their slippery eroto-mystical theme, “Ray Gun,” which was inaugurated in February 1960 when the two opened the Ray Gun exhibition at the Judson Gallery. These prints, totaling 25 distinct artworks, are collected here with the second edition of Claes Oldenburg’s Store Days, Oldenburg’s and Emmet William’s artists’ book on the former’s store and performance venue from 1961 to 1962. The collection further includes a copy of the nineteenth issue of The Floating Bear (1962), posted to Oldenburg, which bears striking illustrations and texts on the Ray Gun theme, hand drawn by the artist on the last page, developing thoughts on the concept as they arose in process. These materials constitute a substantial gathering of Oldenburg’s early career in New York, when he experimented with the printed image as “a special form of publicity, information, modern technology, and traditional practice leading to a work of art” (Rose, Artforum).
A post-war artist who created simultaneously lighthearted and piercing depictions of everyday objects, Oldenburg’s oeuvre transformed the landscape of sculpture and art. Through monumentalizing quotidian material — creating massive public replicas out of food, equipment, articles of clothing, and more — Oldenburg made popular and funny art available in parks, plazas, and the other settings of everyday life. These sculptures were often placed in counterpoint to classical, neoclassical, or simply much older architecture in playful and prodding ways (such as his sculptural work at Yale University).
While the focus of this collection, Oldenburg’s early 1960s “Ray Gun” work, is unlike the sculpture he is perhaps best known for, it is in fact germinal to it. These comic books, sketches, poems, word-art, all printed via the humble mimeograph, are irreverent, proto-punk, graffiti-like, funny, horny, political, mystical, and above all, a mode of researching and interacting with the world and its stuff.
The “Ray Gun.” What is Ray Gun? On the surface, Ray Gun was Oldenburg’s and Jim Dine’s exhibition at the Judson Gallery, where they also produced and printed their work; Ray Gun is also a sculpture of a toy gun now held at MoMA; Ray Gun is hostile to abstract expressionism; Ray Gun ‘zips’ or ‘zaps’, it fires like all guns do, so Ray Gun is also war; Ray Gun is pointy like all guns are; Ray Gun is hot, or “spicy,” and erotic; Ray Gun’s eros is of both men and women’s nude bodies; Ray Gun is the theme of a series of mimeographed artworks and comic books, which revolve around all of the above; Ray Gun is Oldenburg’s alter-ego; Ray Gun is an experiment in picking up any word or thing on the street that has the shape of a gun, or can be reproduced, drawn, printed, or written down that way. Ray Gun is all these things and beyond the sum of its parts.
Oldenburg’s research into and production of Ray Gun was chiefly inspired by the Lower East Side neighborhood where he made his home. His printed work and sculptures rendered figures, letters, sounds, signs, food, and equipment that one would come across on a walk through this part of Manhattan in the early ‘60s. Even further, it was made from materials you could find on the same walk, often printed on or constructed out of cardboard, burlap, and newspapers. It is this aspect which gives the Ray Gun prints their punk, graffiti-like feel, and which moved Oldenburg to plaster his posters, flyers, and comix back onto the neighborhood walls. Through this, these works occupied a remarkable visual polyphony, promoting his art while also reflecting the street back on itself.
The bulk of these materials comprise complete works published for the Ray Gun Spex performances, Oldenburg’s the first Happening held at Judson Gallery. Held from February 29 – March 2, 1960, the Ray Gun Spex included performances by Jim Dine, Al Hansen, Dick Higgins, Allan Krapow, Robert Whitman, and Oldenburg himself (Red Grooms was billed to perform, but did not). For the Happening, Oldenburg mimeographed the present program, the Ray Gun Money, three artist’s books, and two prints (Axsolm & Platzker, 4-6.5). Not only remarkable for being a complete set of these works, these also constitute some of the earliest recorded printed works by Oldenburg writ large — with only three other works preceding them, according to Axsom and Platzker.
Present here are several remarkable highlights of archival significance. First, present are two copies of Ray Gun Poems. While Oldenburg published an edition of unknown size for Ray Gun Spex, he felt that the work was a failure after printing and claimed to destroy all the copies prior to distribution. However, in Axsolm and Platzker’s 1997 catalogue raisonné, they note, that “at least one copy has survived in the artist’s archive.” They trace no other copies; OCLC still locates no institutional holdings as of February 2026, and we can trace no other copy in the standard auction records. One of the present copies features six leaves, which conforms to no known copy; the other copy conforms to Axsolm and Platzker 6.1.
The other notable highlights include two evidently unrecorded mimeographed artist’s books of the same period and composition, seemingly titled My Epharun Sheep Herders and Zapismo Anthropological Scientifical. Also present is another print produced in the same style as Street Scene #1 (PWEET) and Street Scene #2 (YABLA), both of which are also present here, produced in the same style as Street Scene #1 (PWEET) and Street Scene #2 (YABLA), both of which are also present here.
In total, the collection contains the following mimeographed artist books and comix printed by Oldenburg in the basement of Judson Memorial Church: the Ray Gun Spex program (conforming to Axsolm & Platzker 4); five examples of Ray Gun Money; Ray Gun Poems [2 copies]; More Ray Gun Poems [2 copies]; Spicy Ray Gun; Street Scene #1 (PWEET); Street Scene #2 (YABLA); the unrecorded print in the Street Scene style; Ray Gun Comics [2 copies]; The Super Thing; Some Notes on Ray Machine Reality [2 copies]; Ray Gun Cut Out Coloring and a Real Love Kind of Deluxe Book [2 copies]; More Ray Gun Poems [2 copies]; Zapismo Anthropological Scientifical; Ray Gun Cut Out Coloring and a Real Love Kind of Deluxe Book; My Epharun Sheep Herders; and Comic by Red Grooms; and The Smiling Workman by Jim Dine. Accompanying these are Oldenburg’s copy of The Floating Bear number 19, with extensive manuscript illustrations on the Ray Gun theme, and a second edition of his artist’s book Store Days (including the typically lacking business card).
Altogether, this is a significant gathering of Oldenburg’s visionary and hilarious early work, some of which is heretofore unrecorded — and all of which rarely seen at all in the trade, nor in institutional holdings.
Item-level inventory and descriptions available upon request.
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