John Baldessari

John Baldessari
Born	(1931-06-07) June 7, 1931 National City, California
Nationality	American
Known for	Painting, Conceptual art

John Anthony Baldessari (born June 17, 1931, National City, California) is an American conceptual artist known for his work featuring found photography and appropriated images. He lives and works in Santa Monica and Venice, California

Initially a painter, Baldessari began to incorporate texts and photography into his canvases in the mid 1960s. He has created thousands of works that demonstrate—and, in many cases, combine—the narrative potential of images and the associative power of language within the boundaries of the work of art. His art has been featured in more than 200 solo exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe. His work has had a huge influence on Cindy Sherman, David Salle, and Barbara Kruger among others.

Education

• 1949-53 B.A., San Diego State College, California.

• 1954-55 University of California, Berkeley.

• 1955 University of California, Los Angeles.

• 1955-57 M.A., San Diego State College, California.

• 1957-59 Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles.

• Chouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles.

Early career

In 1959, Baldessari began teaching art in the San Diego school system. He kept teaching for nearly three decades, in schools and junior colleges and community colleges, and eventually at the university level. In 1970, Baldessari began teaching at CalArts. His first classes included David Salle, Jack Goldstein, James Welling, Barbara Bloom, Matt Mullican, and Troy Brauntuch. 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." The class, which operated outside of medium-specificity, was influential in informing the context for addressing a student's art practice at CalArts. He quit teaching at CalArts in 1986, moving on to teach at UCLA, which he continued until 2008.

Work and themes

Early text paintings

Baldessari's early major works were canvas paintings that were empty but for painted statements derived from contemporary art theory. An early attempt of Baldessari's included the hand-painted phrase "Suppose it is true after all? WHAT THEN?" 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 black font. 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 historian George 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.

Juxtaposing text with images

Related to his early text paintings were his Wrong series, which paired photographic images with lines of text from a book about composition. His photographic California Map Project created physical forms that resembled the letters in "California" geographically near to the very spots on the map that they were printed. In the Binary Code Series, Baldessari used images as information holders by alternating photographs to stand in for the on-off state of binary 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 a glass, or a block of wood, 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 to Rene Magritte's The Treachery of Images; the images similarly were used to stand in for the objects described. However, the series also apparently refers to Sigmund Freud's famous attributed observation that "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar", as well as to Rudyard Kipling's "... a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke."

Arbitrary games

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 as Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line, 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.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.

Pointing

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 critiques formalist assessments of art in a segment from his video How We Do Art Now, 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.

Baldessari's Commissioned Paintings series took the idea of pointing literally, after he read a criticism of conceptual 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 a choreographer, 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.

Disowning of early work

In 1970 he burnt all of the paintings he had created between 1953 and 1966 as part of a new piece, titled "The Cremation Project". The ashes from these paintings were baked into cookies and placed into an urn, and the resulting art installation consists of a bronze plaque with the destroyed paintings' birth and death dates, as well as the recipe for making the cookies. 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 of auto-destructive artist Jean Tinguely.

Books

• Parse. Zurich: JRP|Ringier, 2010. Artist’s book version of the Ringier Annual Report 2009 project.
• John Baldessari: Koen van den Broek: This an Example of That. Gemeenteplein (Belgium): bkSM (beeldende kunst Strombeek/Mechelen), 2008. Collaborative work with Koen van den Broek.
• John Baldessari: Alejandro Cesarco: Retrospective. Cologne:Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2007. Collaborative work with Alejandro Cesarco.
• Again the Metaphor Problem and Other Engaged Critical Discourses about Art: A Conversation Between John Baldessari, Liam Gillick and Lawrence Weiner, Moderated by Beatrix Ruf. Vienna and New York: SpringerWienNewYork, 2007.
• Prima Facie: Marilyn’s Dress, A Poem (In Four Parts). Cologne: Verlag Der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2006.
• The Metaphor Problem Again: A Conversation Moderated by Beatrix Ruf. Heidelberg, Germany: Springer-Verlag, 2006. Transcription of a conversation with John Baldessari, Liam Gillick, Lawrence Weiner, Beatrix Ruf, and Cristina Bechtler.
• Yours in Food, John Baldessari: With Meditations on Eating by Paul Auster, John Baldessari, David Byrne, Dave Eggers, David Gilbert, Tim Griffin, Andy Grundberg, John Haskell, Michael More, Glenn O’Brien, Francine Prose, Peter Schjeldahl, Lynne Tillman. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004.
• Brown and Green and Other Parables. Reykjavik, Iceland: i8 and Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland, 2001.
• The Metaphor Problem Again. Collaboration with Lawrence Weiner. Ink-Tree Kunsnacht and Mai 35 Galerie Zurich, Switzerland.
• Zorro (Two Gestures and one Mark). Oktagon Verlag, Cologne, Germany.
• Lamb. Images by John Baldessari, story by Meg Cranston. Valencia, Spain: IVAM Centre Julio Gonzlez
• The Telephone Book (With Pearls). Gent, Belgium: Imschoot, Uitgevers for IC.
• The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy. Images by John Baldessari, text by Laurence Sterne, Arion Press, San Francisco, CA.
• Close-Cropped Tales. CEPA Gallery and Albright—Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, 1981.
• Fable - A Sentence of Thirteen Parts (With Twelve Alternate Verbs) Ending in FABLE. Hamburg, West Germany: Anatol AV und Filmproduktion
• Brutus Killed Caesar. Akron, Ohio: Emily H. Davis Art Gallery, University of Akron; in cooperation with Sonnabend Gallery, New York, and Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.
• Throwing a Ball Once to Get Three Melodies and Fifteen Chords, John Baldessari: 1973. Berkeley, California: Regents of the University of California; and Irvine, California: Art Gallery, University of California at Irvine
• Four Events and Reactions. Florence: Centro Di; and Paris: Galerie Sonnabend.
• Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line (Best of Thirty-Six Attempts). Milan: Giampaolo Prearo Editore S.r.L.; and Galleria Toselli
• Ingres and Other Parables. Texts in English, French, German, and Italian. London: Studio International Publications
• Choosing: Green Beans. Milan: Edizioni Toselli

Quotes

"If I saw the art around me that I liked, then I wouldn’t do art."

"I will not make any more boring art".

Exhibitions

Baldessari had first gallery solo exhibition at the Molly Barnes Gallery in Los Angeles in 1968. His first retrospective exhibition in the U.S. in 1981 was mounted by the New Museum of Modern Art in New York, and traveled to the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, the CAM, Houston, the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, and the Museum Folkwang, Essen. Baldessari's work has since been exhibited in the 47th Venice Biennial (1997); the Carnegie International (1985–86), the Whitney Biennial (1983), and Documenta V (1972) and VII (1982). In 1994, the Museum of Modern Art presented "Artist's Choice: John Baldessari", and in 1990-92 another retrospective survey of his work was shown at MOCA, Los Angeles, which traveled to SFMOMA, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Whitney Museum, and the Musée d'Art Contemporain, Montreal. In 1995-96 a retrospective, "This Not That", was shown at Cornerhouse, Manchester, and traveled to London, Stuttgart, Ljubljana, Oslo, and Lisbon. In 2009 a major retrospective exhibition Pure Beauty opened at the Tate Modern, London, which travelled to MACBA, Barcelona; LACMA, Los Angeles; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, through 2011. Solo presentations of his work at museums have included exhibitions at the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, the Kunsthaus Graz, and Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin (2004); Museo d'Arte Moderna Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Trento (2000–2001); Sprengel Museum, Hannover, (1999–2000); and Albertina, Vienna (1999). Baldessari was invited to curate the exhibition "Ways of Seeing: John Baldessari Explores the Collection" at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in 2007.

Awards

• 2009 Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement, 53rd International Art Exhibition Venice Biennale,Venice, Italy
• 2006 Certificate of Recognition, the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau, Los Angeles, CA.
• 2005 Americans for the Arts, Lifetime Achievement Award, New York, October 11, 2005
• Rolex Mentor and Protégé' Arts Initiative, Honoring, New York, November 7, 2005.
• 2004 Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 2003 “2nd Place Best Show Commercial Gallery National by US Art Critics Association for exhibit at Margo Leavin, 2003
• 2002 “Best Web-Based Original Art,” AICA USA Best Show Awards, 2001/2002 Season.

Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities Fellow, sponsored by the University of Southern California.

• 2000 Artist Space, New York
• 1999 Spectrum-International Award for Photography of the Foundation of Lower Saxony, Germany

College Art Associations Lifetime Achievement Award.

• 1997 Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts, California.
• 1996 Oscar Kokoschka Prize, Austria.
• 1988 Guggenheim Fellowship

Position on the art market

Baldessari set a personal auction record when his acrylic-on-canvas piece Quality Material (1966–1968) was sold for $4,408,000 at Christie's New York in 2007. Baldessari's works are part of major public and private collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Broad Collection.

In 1972, Ileana Sonnabend agreed to represent him worldwide. In 1999, after twenty-six years with the Sonnabend Gallery, Baldessari went to Marian Goodman. He is also represented by Margo Leavin, Los Angeles (since 1984), and Sprüth Magers, Berlin/London.

Bibliography

• Isenberg, Barbara. State of the Arts: California Artists Talk About Their Work. 2005

External links

• Baldessari.org
• John Baldessari Artist Biography on Electronic Arts Intermix
• Baldessari's Your Name in Lights at Stedelijk Museum
• John Baldessari Catalogue Raisonné
• John Baldessari at Brooke Alexander Gallery
• Interview with John Baldessari (1973) by Moira Roth in X-TRA : Contemporary Art Quarterly
• UCLA Art faculty page
• John Baldessari - New York Times/Eli Broad Collection
• John Baldessari in the Video Data Bank.
• John Baldessari: Cut to the Chase by Leslie Dick, East of Borneo, November 01, 2010.
• John Baldessari at the Museum of Modern Art
• John Baldessari on Artabase
• "THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE. Communication and ambiguity in the work of John Baldessari" (2010) Interview with John Baldessari for Ràdio Web MACBA
• John Baldessari on "Pure Beauty", a retrospective exhibtion at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA)
• John Baldessari - Artist on KCET Departures Venice
• Calvin Tomkins, "No More Boring Art," The New Yorker, October 18, 2010
• "John Baldessari at the Metropolitan Museum of Art", The New Yorker.
• John Baldessari: “I Am Making Art”, 1971 (Video)
• Oral history interview with John Baldessari, 1992 Apr. 4-5 from the Smithsonian Archives of American Art
• Tate: John Baldessari: Pure Beauty The artist talks about his practice. October 21, 2009
• John Baldessari exhibit catalog Wright State University's CORE