Intermediality and Metaphoricity in Claes Oldenburg’s Poetry

This essay offers a close examination of artist Claes Oldenburg’s understudied visual and concrete poetry written between 1956 and 1962. It posits that Oldenburg’s art, irrespective of format or medium, is affected by his large-scale metaphorical bundle “art is a theater of vision,” and that this view of art originates in his poetry. Metaphors such as snapshot vision, the camera eye, and the cartoon eye are discussed as text-generating principles of intermediality in poems such as “Things to See” (1956), an untitled street poem (1959), “MANYELLS” (1959), “Wat I Makz Iz Konkrete Tawts” (1961), and “SONG” (1962). The essay demonstrates how intermediality and metaphoricity are connected and how poetry and sculpture from Oldenburg’s street and store periods are shaped by it.