John Baldessari | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Baldessari in 2009 | |
| Born | John Anthony Baldessari (1931-06-17)June 17, 1931 |
| Died | January 2, 2020(2020-01-02) (aged 88) Venice, California, U.S. |
| Known for | Painting,conceptual art |
| Notable work | Everything is Purged... (1966–68), Tips for Artists Who Want to Sell (1966–68), Bloody Sundae (1987), Frames and Ribbons (1988), Noses & Ears, Etc.: Blood, Fist, And Head (With Nose And Ear) (2006) |
| Style | Contemporary Art |
| Spouse | Carol Ann Wixom (1960–1984) |
| Awards | 2014National Medal of Arts Award, Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, awarded byLa Biennale di Venezia,Goslarer Kaiserring,Guggenheim Fellowship |
John Anthony Baldessari (June 17, 1931 – January 2, 2020)[1] was an Americanconceptual artist known for his work featuring found photography andappropriated images. He lived and worked inSanta Monica andVenice, California.
Initially a painter, Baldessari began to incorporate texts and photography into his canvases in the mid-1960s. In 1970, he began working in printmaking, film, video, installation, sculpture and photography.[2] He created thousands of works which demonstrate—and, in many cases, combine—the narrative potential ofimages and the associative power oflanguage within the boundaries of the work of art. His art has been featured in more than 200 solo exhibitions in the United States and Europe.[3] His work influenced that ofCindy Sherman,David Salle,Annette Lemieux, andBarbara Kruger among others.[4][5]
Baldessari was born inNational City, California,[6] to Hedvig Marie Jensen (1896–1950), a Danish nurse,[7] and Antonio Baldessari (1877–1976), an Italian salvage dealer. Baldessari and his elder sister were raised inSouthern California.[8] Baldessari grew up in relative isolation during the Great Depression.[9]
He attendedSweetwater High School; earned a BA fromSan Diego State College[7] (1949–53); studied atUniversity of California, Berkeley (1954–55);University of California, Los Angeles (1955); earned an M.A. fromSan Diego State College, California (1955–57); and studied atOtis Art Institute, Los Angeles (1957–59), andChouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles.[citation needed]
In 1959, Baldessari began teaching art in the San Diego school system. He taught for nearly three decades, in schools and junior colleges and community colleges, and eventually at the university level. When theUniversity of California decided to open up a campus in San Diego, the new head of the Visual Art Department,Paul Brach, asked Baldessari to be part of the originating faculty in 1968. AtUCSD he shared an office withDavid Antin.[10] In 1970, Baldessari moved to Santa Monica, where he met many artists and writers, and began teaching atCalArts. His first classes includedDavid Salle,Jack Goldstein,Mike Kelley,Ken Feingold,Tony Oursler,James Welling,Barbara Bloom,Matt Mullican, andTroy Brauntuch.[11][12] While at CalArts, Baldessari taught "the infamous Post Studio class", which he intended to "indicate people not daubing away at canvases or chipping away at stone, that there might be some other kind of class situation."[13] The class, which operated outside of medium-specificity, was influential in informing the context for addressing a student's art practice at CalArts, and established a tradition of conceptual critique at CalArts that was carried on by artists such asMichael Asher.[14] He quit teaching at CalArts in 1986, moving on to teach at UCLA, which he continued until 2008.[11] At UCLA, his students includedElliott Hundley andAnalia Saban.
By 1966, Baldessari was using photographs and text, or simply text, on canvas.[2] His early major works werecanvas paintings that were empty but for painted statements derived from contemporaryart theory. An early attempt of Baldessari's included the hand-painted phrase "Suppose it is true after all? WHAT THEN?" (1967) on a heavily worked painted surface. However, this proved personally disappointing because the form and method conflicted with the objective use of language that he preferred to employ. Baldessari decided the solution was to remove his own hand from the construction of the image and to employ a commercial, lifeless style so that the text would impact the viewer without distractions. The words were then physically lettered by sign painters, in an unornamented blackfont. The first of this series presented the ironic statement "A TWO-DIMENSIONAL SURFACE WITHOUT ANY ARTICULATION IS A DEAD EXPERIENCE" (1967).
Another work,Painting for Kubler (1967–68) presented the viewer theoretical instructions on how to view it and on the importance of context and continuity with previous works. This work referenced art historianGeorge Kubler's seminal book,The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things. The seemingly legitimate art concerns were intended by Baldessari to become hollow and ridiculous when presented in such a purely self-referential manner.
In 1970, Baldessari and five friends[8] burnt all of the paintings he had created between 1953 and 1966 as part of a new piece, titledThe Cremation Project. The ashes from these paintings were baked into cookies[15] and placed into an urn, and the resulting art installation consists of a bronze commemorative plaque with the destroyed paintings' birth and death dates, as well as the recipe for making the cookies.[16] Through the ritual of cremation Baldessari draws a connection between artistic practice and the human life cycle. Thus the act of disavowal becomes generative as with the work ofauto-destructive artistJean Tinguely.
Baldessari is best known for works that blend photographic materials (such as film stills), take them out of their original context and rearrange their form, often including the addition of words or sentences. Related to his early text paintings were hisWrong series (1966–1968), which paired photographic images with lines of text from an amateur photography book, aiming at the violation of a set of basic "rules" on snapshot composition.[17] In one of the works, Baldessari had himself photographed in front of a palm precisely so that it would appear that the tree were growing out of his head.[18] His photographicCalifornia Map Project (1969) created physical forms that resembled the letters in "California" geographically near to the very spots on the map that they were printed. In theBinary Code Series, Baldessari used images as information holders by alternating photographs to stand in for the on-off state ofbinary code; one example alternated photos of a woman holding a cigarette parallel to her mouth and then dropping it away.
Another of Baldessari's series juxtaposed an image of an object such as aglass, or a block ofwood, and the phrase "A glass is a glass" or "Wood is wood" combined with "but a cigar is a good smoke" and the image of the artist smoking a cigar. These directly refer toRené Magritte'sThe Treachery of Images; the images similarly were used to stand in for the objects described. However, the series also apparently refers toSigmund Freud's famous attributed observation that "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar",[19] as well as toRudyard Kipling's "… a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke."[20]
In "Double Bill", a 2012 series of large inkjet prints,[21] Baldessari paired the work of two selected artists (such asGiovanni di Paolo withDavid Hockney, orFernand Léger withMax Ernst) on a single canvas, further altering the appropriated picture plane by overlaying his own hand-painted color additions. Baldessari then names only one of his two artistic "collaborators" on each canvas's lower edge, such as…AND MANET or…AND DUCHAMP.[22][23]
Baldessari has expressed that his interest in language comes from its similarities in structure to games, as both operate by an arbitrary and mandatory system of rules. In this spirit, many of his works are sequences showing attempts at accomplishing an arbitrary goal, such asThrowing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line (1973), in which the artist attempted to do just that, photographing the results, and eventually selecting the "best out of 36 tries", with 36 being the determining number just because that is the standard number of shots on a roll of 35mm film. The writer eldritch Priest ties John Baldessari's pieceThrowing four balls in the air to get a square (best of 36 tries) as an early example ofpost-conceptual art.[24] This work was published in 1973 by a young Italian publisher: Giampaolo Prearo that was one of the first to believe and invest in the work of Baldessari. He printed two series one in 2000 copies and a second more precious reserved to the publisher in 500 copies. Following Baldessari's seminal statement "I will not make any more boring Art", he conceived the workThe Artist Hitting Various Objects with a Golf Club (1972–73), composed of 30 photographs of the artist swinging and hitting with a golf club objects excavated from a dump, as a parody of cataloging rather than a thorough straight classification.[25]
Much of Baldessari's work involves pointing, in which he tells the viewer not only what to look at but how to make selections and comparisons, often simply for the sake of doing so. Baldessari'sCommissioned Paintings (1969) series took the idea of pointing literally, after he read a criticism ofconceptual art that claimed it was nothing more than pointing. Beginning with photos of a hand pointing at various objects, Baldessari then hired amateur yet technically adept artists to paint the pictures. He then added a caption "A painting by [painter's name]" to each finished painting. In this instance, he has been likened to achoreographer, directing the action while having no direct hand in it, and these paintings are typically read as questioning the idea of artistic authorship. The amateur artists have been analogized to sign painters in this series, chosen for their pedestrian methods that were indifferent to what was being painted.[26] Baldessari critiques formalist assessments of art in a segment from his videoHow We Do Art Now (1973), entitled "Examining Three 8d Nails", in which he gives obsessive attention to minute details of the nails, such as how much rust they have, or descriptive qualities such as which appears "cooler, more distant, less important" than the others.
Circular adhesive dots covering up the faces of photographed and painted portraits are a prevailing motif in Baldessari's work from the mid-1980s onward.[27] The artist himself suspected that, despite the broad array of approaches he's taken over the course of his career, he will be best remembered as "the guy who puts dots over peoples faces."[28] Examples of the "dot portraits" would include—for example—Bloody Sunday (1987) orStonehenge with Two Persons (2005), though these works are numerous and it is difficult to identify an exemplar. The dots in these paintings evoke brightly colored price-stickers sometimes seen at garage sales, thrift stores or placed on retail items during a sale. Indeed, these stickers appear to have been the inspiration for the method. Describing his initial intuitive leap in this direction, Baldessari said, "I just had these price stickers I was using for something else, in some graphic way and I put them on all the faces and I just felt like it leveled the playing field."[29] The dot-faced works may sometimes be described as paintings, collages, or may be released as print editions.
Baldessari began making prints in the early 1970s and continued to produce editions. He created his first print –I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art (1971) - as an edition to raise funds for theNova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax. The lithograph was created in conjunction with the now renowned exhibition for which – at Baldessari's request – students endlessly wrote the phrase "I will not make any more boring art" on the gallery walls. The artist has since worked internationally with premier publishers including Arion Press of San Francisco, Brook Alexander Editions of New York,Cirrus Editions of Los Angeles, Crown Point Press of San Francisco, Edition Jacob Samuel of Santa Monica,Gemini G.E.L. of Los Angeles, Mixografia of Los Angeles, Multiples, Multi Editions of Los Angeles, Inc. of New York, andPeter Blum Editions of New York. His 1988 prints,The Fallen Easel andObject (with Flaw), represented a major shift in Baldessari's approach to presentation, allowing a more complex relationship between his found imagery. In both prints, Baldessari expertly contrasts unrelated photographs to suggest a mysterious and/or ominous undercurrent. In the 1990s Baldessari began working with Mixografia Workshop to create three-dimensional prints utilizing their unique process of printing from metal molds. Baldessari's interest in dimensionality has carried over to recent editions fromGemini G.E.L., including thePerson with Guitar series (2005) and the print seriesNoses & Ears, Etc. (2006–2007) in which screen-printed images are constructed in three layers onsintra with hand painting. A 2007 publication from Gemini isGod Nose, a cast aluminum piece that is designed to hang from the ceiling.[30] Baldessari also contributed to the 2008Artists for Obama portfolio, a set of prints in a limited edition of 150 published byGemini G.E.L.
Originally conceived in 1970,Unrealised Proposal for Cadavre Piece would have visitors look through a peep-hole and see a dead male body laid out with its feet towards them inside a climate-controlled vitrine,[31] made to resembleAndrea Mantegna’s painting,The Lamentation over the Dead Christ (1480).Hans Ulrich Obrist, the co-director of London’sSerpentine Gallery andKlaus Biesenbach, the director ofMoMA PS1, first attempted to realize Baldessari’s idea in 2011 and the resulting paperwork of failed attempts to procure a willing male cadaver was displayed in the exhibition "11 Rooms" at theManchester International Festival.[32]
Baldessari's filmPolice Drawing documents a 1971 performance,Police Drawing Project. In this piece, the artist walked into a class of art students who had never seen him, set up a video camera to document the proceedings, and left the room. Subsequently, a police artist entered and, based on the students' testimony, sketched a likeness of the artist.[33] In the black-and-white videoI Am Making Art (1971), Baldessari stands facing the camera; for nearly 20 minutes, he strikes and then holds various poses — crossing his arms over his chest or swinging one arm out to one side or pointing directly at the lens, for example — and with each new gesture, he states "I am making art."[5] In a 1972 tribute to fellow artistSol LeWitt, Baldessari sang lines from LeWitt's thirty-five statements on conceptual art to the tune of popular songs.[34] Other films includeTeaching a Plant the Alphabet and theInventory videos, also from 1972.
A riff on his 1977 color videoSix Colourful Inside Jobs, inThirteen Colorful Inside Jobs (2013) a room is repainted by a performer in a different colour every day for the duration of the exhibition, carefully following the instructions of the artist.[32][35]
Baldessari created his first ever sculpture,Beethoven's Trumpet (with Ear) Opus# 127, 130, 131, 132, 133, 135 (2007), a series of 6 resin, fiberglass, bronze, aluminum, and electronics components in the form of a gigantic bronze trumpet extending off an oversized ear sculpted on the wall.[36] The sculpture was produced with Beyer Projects.[37] When the viewer speaks into the trumpet, the sounds causes a short recital of a phrase from a Beethoven string quartet. Baldessari has gone on to create sculptural works that often incorporate resin, bronze, and steel, such as the approximately 2.4 m carrot (Fake Carrot, 2016) and an elongated bronze figure trapped wearing a wooden barrel in a nod to Giacometti (Giacometti Variation, 2018).[38]
Baldessari was in over 200 solo shows and 1,000 group shows in his six-decade career.[39] He had his first gallery solo exhibition at theMolly Barnes Gallery in Los Angeles in 1968.[7] His first retrospective exhibition in the U.S. in 1981 was mounted by theNew Museum of Contemporary Art in New York,[11] and traveled to theContemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, the CAM, Houston, theVan Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, and theMuseum Folkwang, Essen.
His work has since been exhibited in:
Solo presentations of his work at museums have included exhibitions at:
Retrospectives of his work were shown atMOCA, Los Angeles, which traveled toSFMOMA, theHirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, theWhitney Museum and theMusée d'Art Contemporain, Montreal in 1990–92; atCornerhouse, Manchester, and traveled to London, Stuttgart, Ljubljana, Oslo, and Lisbon in 1995-96 entitled "This Not That"; andPure Beauty opened at theTate Modern, London, in 2009 and travelled toMACBA, Barcelona;LACMA, Los Angeles; andThe Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, through 2011.
There was an "Artist's Choice: John Baldessari" at theMuseum of Modern Art in 1994, and the artist was invited to curate the exhibition "Ways of Seeing: John Baldessari Explores the Collection" at theHirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in 2006, and he created theexhibition design for "Magritte and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images" at theLos Angeles County Museum of Art.
For the 2017/2018 season at theVienna State Opera he designed the large-scale image (176 m2 (1,890 sq ft)) "Graduation" for the ongoing series "Safety Curtain", conceived bymuseum in progress.[40][41]
Baldessari's work is held in the followingpermanent collections:
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Baldessari has been the recipient of numerous awards, among others:
In 2013, theCalifornia Institute of the Arts opened its John Baldessari Art Studio Building, which features approximately 7,000 square feet of space—much of it used as studio space for art students and faculty.[52]
Baldessari set a personal auction record when his acrylic-on-canvas pieceQuality Material (1966–1968) was sold for $4.4 million atChristie's New York in 2007.[53]
In 1972,Ileana Sonnabend agreed to represent him worldwide. In 1999, after twenty-six years with theSonnabend Gallery, Baldessari went toMarian Goodman.[11] He was also represented byMargo Leavin (1984–2013),[7]Sprüth Magers (from 1998),Mai 36 Galerie and Galerie Greta Meert.[54] Since 2021, the artist's estate has been working with Sprüth Magers worldwide.[55]
Between 1960 and 1984, Baldessari was married toMontessorian teacher Carol Ann Wixom;[8] they had two children.
In 1990, Baldessari purchased a bungalow in the coastal Ocean Park neighborhood of Santa Monica and enlisted architects Ron Godfredsen and Danna Sigal for a redesign. He also owned aFrank Gehry-designed vacation home in Venice, California.[56] He operated a studio on Main Street in Santa Monica alongsideRichard Diebenkorn andJames Turrell.[57]
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