baldessari by paul henrickson, ph.d

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Baldessari by Paul Henrickson, Ph.D. tm. © 2010 John Baldessari John Baldessari in Venice, 2009 Born June 7, 1931 (age 78) National City, California Nationality American Field Painting , Conceptual art John Baldessari, (b. June 7, 1931, National City, California ) is a conceptual artist . His work often attempts to point out irony in contemporary art theory and practices or reduce it to absurdity. His art has been featured in more than 200 solo exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe [1] . My initial thoughts of Baldessari and his approach follow: my comments are in red. Christopher Miles on John Baldessari writes

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An essay evaluating communication, behavior and reason

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Page 1: Baldessari by Paul Henrickson, Ph.D

Baldessari by Paul Henrickson, Ph.D. tm. © 2010

John Baldessari

John Baldessari in Venice, 2009

BornJune 7, 1931 (age 78)

National City, California

Nationality American

Field Painting, Conceptual art

John Baldessari, (b. June 7, 1931, National City, California) is a conceptual artist.

His work often attempts to point out irony in contemporary art theory and practices or reduce it to absurdity. His art has been featured in more than 200 solo exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe[1].

My initial thoughts of Baldessari and his approach follow: my comments are in red.

Christopher Miles on John Baldessari writes

Page 2: Baldessari by Paul Henrickson, Ph.D

John BaldessariBeethoven's Trumpet (With Ear), Opus 127 2007Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York © John BaldessariResin, fibreglass, bronze, aluminuim and electronics

Christopher Miles on John Baldessari writes: …again, my comments are in red.

The American artist John Baldessari has influenced several generations of younger artists, (regretably!)

and has, since the 1960s, consistently renegotiated his own working practice – from his earlier text paintings

to his reworkings of old film stills and the commissioning of paintings made by amateur artists to his

specifications. How oxymoronic to employ an algorithmic approach to what normally is

inspirational Christopher Miles pays him a visit.

“When I visited John Baldessari, the first thing he showed me after introducing me to his dog, Giotto,* was a

reproduction of a Velázquez he saw recently at the Prado – a painting he appreciates for the way its

representational imagery yields to a kind of embedded abstraction.[What, pray, is so surprising about there

being abstract qualities in “realistic” work?] Such an interest in Old Masters might seem odd [why?] for an

artist who famously burned most of the paintings in his studio four decades ago. That radical gesture marked

the end of what one might call Baldessari’s first career (that of an abstract painter) and the beginning of his

second career and emergence as a conceptual artist. But that career would come back to an intensive studio

practice and an intimate involvement with making things by hand….oh my, how innovative ! One might recall

that Rouault also burned his work and, perhaps, they were burned for somewhat the same reasons…

although I doubt it. I had assumed Rouault had burned his work because these pieces failed to reach

his standard. I assume, also, that Baldessari burned his because he had given up trying to reach

Page 3: Baldessari by Paul Henrickson, Ph.D

his standard and chose, instead, to change the perspective and achieve success a different way…

a more cynical way it would seem. Not unlike a severely disappointed lover who dons a satirical

costume resembling his beloved. This sort of transfigured transvestitism has a colorful history,

according to some report a young Aztec conquered by Cortez, as often prisoners do, fell in love

with his conqueror, but the conqueror wanted his sister so the passionate youth, killed his sister

and crawled into her skin….my gosh!

*I wonder how much a coincidence it is that the name of Giotto, one of Western civilization’s major artists who recreated

“substance” in the graphic arts, should be a favorite name with at least two personages I know about claiming to have an

interest in art…both of whom seem to get a thrill from combining the unusual, in Baldissari’s case joining the name

“Giotto” to a dog and in the Nun’s case choosing the name “Giotto” for herself, The Dominican Nun, stationed in

Albuquerque, and allowed by her Order to run a gallery,stressed nihilism, was sexually provocative and questionably

proved herself to be a thief. Do they see themselves, I wonder, as somehow Christ-like in pointing out the vanity of man’s

efforts? Such a program, I suppose, would have as much justification as Dante’s having condemned to Hell and Purgatory

many of his contemporaries. Well, if condemnation is in style, let is begin by firstly condemning the effort to apotheosize

triviality. I find it quite humbling to politely listen to what is supposed to be an orderly presentation of the ideas inherent in

organizing a communities cultural efforts offered by a Ph.D. graduate but turned out to be random memories of his

childhood which was of nointerest to the audiene and ended up with a dramatic grammatical error……….hhmmm,

modern education.

In the late 1960s, having studied during most of the 1950s at a handful of art schools and universities in

California, Baldessari was back in the town of his youth. National City, a place he describes as not much

different now than it was then, is a crossroads off the highway south of San Diego on the way to Tijuana,

populated largely by servicemen and workers connected to the Navy. He returned to the town where his

parents (a Danish nurse who had made her way to San Diego and an Austrian entrepreneur and jack-of-all-

trades who had [emigrated to] the US after the First World War) had raised him and his sister. Here, he set

up his studio in a failed movie theatre that his father had built. “I was filling the place up,” he recalls. “I

thought, ‘If I continue this, I am going to be inundated with paintings,’ so I just called up a few friends and said,

‘If you want anything, you can have it; I am going to cremate the rest of them.’” …as a tribute to Moloch?

He saved works representing a new direction he was exploring. The rest were reduced to ashes and became

the contents of a defining work in the emerging conceptual art movement. Heavily influenced by artists

including Sol LeWitt and Marcel Duchamp, as well as composer John Cage, Baldessari had come to identify

with the conceptual art designation. A sampling of titles from exhibitions he participated in at the time reveals

both the momentum of the new movement and his immersion in it: ‘Konzeption– Conception’ at the Stadtischen

Museum in Leverkusen, Germany (1969), ‘Conception–Perception’ at the Eugenia Butler Gallery in Los

Angeles (1969), ‘Art by Telephone’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (1969), ‘The Appearing

Disappearing Image Object’ at the Newport Harbor Art Museum, California (1969), ‘Information’ at the Museum

Page 4: Baldessari by Paul Henrickson, Ph.D

of Modern Art in New York (1970) and ‘Software’ at the Jewish Museum in New York (1970), where a plaque

commemorating the cremation was displayed and an urn containing the ashes was temporarily embedded in a

wall.

Shortly thereafter, Baldessari moved to Los Angeles, where he still lives in Santa Monica. Matters of timing and

place are not unrelated to the shift in his work. He remembers National City as a cultural blank spot, where his

contact with other artists and access to an art scene was limited: “I think the good part about it was that I had

this idea of what my life might be, and I said, ‘Nobody’s ever going to see this stuff, so I’ll just do what I want.’ I

didn’t feel anybody looking over my shoulder, anyway. So it was good, because I had to figure out what art was

for me and what I believed, rather than receive wisdom.” Receive wisdom?...what has he received and

has he generated any? I will say that to “just do what I want” is a real beginning to self-knowledge

and if, by chance, what Baldessari learns about himself is that he is better at ridiculing the efforts

of others than at devising a more substantial vision such as did the painter, (not the dog or the Nun),

Giotto, then he and the world knows where to find him…if they have the eyes to see.

Part of what he wanted to do was renegotiate his relationship with making art, and with photography: “I was

doing some sort of visual looping. I would photograph stuff that looked like the paintings I had just done, and

then I would feed that back into the paintings, and then take photographs again of the paintings and keep doing

this. Photography also was visual note-taking. I would pin these photographs up on the wall, just to look at for

inspiration for my paintings. Then I thought: ‘Why do I have to translate this photograph into a painting? I mean,

this takes a lot of time.’ And that’s where I made the leap to say, ‘Why do this? Why can’t I just use

photography?’” Oh my! What a brilliant discovery..indeed…how innovative…now, WHAT?….

photography? Such a transformation is quite reasonable, very understandale and it does

represent a willingness, obligation or compulsion to move (change) in response to something, But

why, I must ask myself, does there seem to be little evidence of his having used the photographic

reality to build a new and self-contained and internally logical image, that is, an image that the

observer can understand…an image that “stands up”as it were. Granted in many situations there

will be no observers who are able to read the internal logic of a work….and there are some works

that have none….it sometimes seems. It is my growing belief that there is in Baldessari’s work,

most especially those where areas of color block out the original image, where what the observer

gets is a reactive response on Baldessri’s part to something he didn’t like.That is something not

unlike the temperamental response of an adolescent Is this all one might expect from someone

who claims, and gives some evidence of being, a creative personality? I have met up with the type

before, one which is passionate about finding fault with what disappoints him but incapable or

unwilling to offer an alternative.

Page 5: Baldessari by Paul Henrickson, Ph.D

Well, John, give it some real thought

John Baldessari

The Pencil Story 1972 - 1973

Marian Goodman Gallery, New York © John Baldessari

Colour photographs, with coloured pencil, mounted on board

That epiphany – part philosophical, part practical – went beyond the use of photography to the larger issue of

removing the artist’s hand from the practice, and led to the works that were spared from the National City

cremation. I am not sure that “spared” is the right word. These were works that combined

photographic images, printed directly on canvas, accompanied by simple, caption-like texts; and works that

consisted entirely of painted texts which variously established narratives, or stated descriptive terms, that

conventionally would appear in paintings as imagery, or would be attached to the painting by way of labelling,

discussion, or documentation. Related inclinations were further explored in subsequent photographic works, as

well as “commissioned paintings” made by amateur artists to Baldessari’s specifications. Thus, like

Rubens, and lover-boy Koons, assuming the role of justifying determinator (“let the riff-raff

do the dirty work”)

John Baldessari

Hitch-hiker (Splattered Blue) 1995

Page 6: Baldessari by Paul Henrickson, Ph.D

Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York © John Baldessari

Colour photograph, acrylic, maquette

Defining of his practice was an embrace of humour, and a tendency towards producing art that,

while it may appeal to more cultivated sensibility, is also accessible. To whom? What

might be the level of “sensibility” necessary for Baldessari’s work to be found

“appealing”? For example, in his video I Am Making Art (1971) (This video was removed by the user) *

we see him repeatedly reciting the title as he raises one arm after the other consecutively, while in Baldessari

Sings LeWitt (1972) he sings 35 of Sol LeWitt’s conceptual statements each to a different tune. It’s a hallmark

of his work, from the earliest to the most recent,that even viewers who might be unwilling to consider it as

serious art, or perhaps as art at all, can still understand his humour and his approach. That long-present quality

is something the artist sees as deriving from an interest in pulling away from a more cloistered idea of art

practice. “What would happen if you just gave people what they want?” he recalls of his early thoughts on the

matter. “And I think the other thing that’s informed my work a lot was teaching. I did it just to support myself, It

does not seem to me that Baldessari’s motivation has changed. He had little respect for

the people who were his students and he has none for the general audience, any more

than Picasso did at one point in his life..only Picasso admitted it. He may feel that if the

public is foolish enough to enjoy his antics and to reward him for his bafoonery they

deserve what they get…I agree up to a point, , but there is another side to that tragic tale

and that I find most distressing and it relates to the highway of lost souls one

encounters along the way…such as, for example,Terry Taggart whose aesthetic

sensibilities haven’t budged a millimeter since 1966/67 when I naively suggested he be

hired for the faculty of the University of Guam, along with Marvin Montvel-Cohen, another

fraud and whose son,Evan Montvel-Cohen, exceeded his father’s disastrous behavior at

least 10,000 fold. but then it fitted back into my art, in that I realised that art was about communication…

you wouldn’t be a closet artist. I thought, ‘Why not? What’s wrong with communicating?’ What does

Baldessari’s language communicate? And to whom?

*I cannot be certain thi is the video referenced by the author Christopher Miles had in mind but it sems to fulfill some of

the description.

“One of the things that had interested me was trying to sidestep my own good taste,” says Baldessari of his

move towards working with found images, “because each time you do something, you get more acute in your

visual sensibility. In general, this is true, but you’ve taken a life-time to move a millimeter. And

so I said, ‘I will somehow have to find ways to block myself, because a sensibility is going to bubble up to the

surface anyway; so why not?’” Such thinking (sic?)has infused his art ever since, and is evident in the

practice of intuitively and calculatedly reworking and recombining found images that has shaped works of the

past three decades. “I guess you can only do so much of what I call armchair philosophy,” notes Baldessari,

who comments that he doesn’t see the term conceptual art describing what he now does. “You just have to try

it out and see if it works. And sometimes a really dumb idea works, and conversely a really good idea doesn’t

work. Well now, that is a concept in itself is it not? It is not, however, what I would call a

Page 7: Baldessari by Paul Henrickson, Ph.D

high level concept, or a penetrating idea. It is, in fact, more characterstic of a young

adolescent tying to avoid responsibility (and knowing he’s addressing idiots) than of a mature

adult working creatively. Is Baldessari aware of what nonsense he generates? (Yes, am

sure he is and that he delights in it) Where I live now most of the would-be intellectual types are

more talented in and more willing to indulge in the tearing down of others’ real

accomplishments and take joy in denegrating legitimate accomplishment than in

acomplishing it themselves. Baldessari states he hasn’t seen anything he likes and so

that is the reason he paints…so he tells us. This seems to suggest that he has seen

something he feels he might improve upon, now it must be our job to find what that is.

“I get really attracted to details and parts of things. I used to tell people I would feel happy if there was just one

square inch of a painting I liked. I wouldn’t even have to like the whole painting.” Such a fondness for

fragments, combined with a general dislike of how photography imposes formats on images and a tendency to

think of words and images as interchangeable, drives his practice. “That’s where my interest in writing comes

in; it’s getting the right word next to the right word that’s important… it’s syntax,” he says about the

juxtapositions in his work. ….oh! well that certainly explains it all….yes?

“Clutter, I think,” he answers when asked what he needs around him to work, tracing his fondness for mining

society’s endless supply of pre-existing imagery to his days in National City, both as a young artist who looked

to books and magazines as a way to “import” his culture, and as a boy growing up with a father who, prone to

salvaging and recycling, saw use-value in everything….and how was this value used? “I would drive my

studio assistants crazy,” says Baldessari, unable to kick habits born of a childhood often spent pulling nails out

of used lumber and reconditioning old hardware. “I would fish paper out of the trash and I’d say, ‘This is usable

paper. Why are you throwing it away?’” It is of little surprise that dumpster diving is among the methods he has

used over the years to obtain the images he works with. All of this looking at castaways for a

different and redefined value I can thoroughly understand…what I fail to understand is

where did he put it? The scavenger is also a constant worker. “A friend of mine once called me a nine-to-

five artist, and he was right,” smiles Baldessari, comfortable in the house/studio compound he’s currently

expanding in anticipation of the loss of his other studio of many years in a building slated for redevelopment.

He takes pleasure in a routine that begins with early-morning reading followed by exercise, and then work until

the dinner hour. He maintains this schedule seven days a week, interrupted only by art excursions and travel,

community obligations such as sitting on the board of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and

projects including curating and designing exhibitions and, more recently, redesigning the logo for the Los

Angeles County Museum of Art – activities the artist attributes to perpetual restlessness and a desire to

continue challenging himself. Well, that is certainly understandable.

Baldessari's early major works were canvas paintings that were empty but for painted statements

derived from contemporary art theory. [which might seem to indicate that the word is the

important element not the painted image…which might explain the blanked out faces

replaced by colored circles]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

Page 8: Baldessari by Paul Henrickson, Ph.D

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. [Is this not nihilistic?}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) [Just how is this ironic?] I suppose it

might be considered “ironic” IF (and only “if”) an experience can be “dead”. The expression

sounds more than a little like an oxymoron (a word that was popular among the quasi-literate about a

year or so ago). Now, only experimentally, of course, a “dead experience” might be having sex

with some one who no longer interests you. Could being punctured by a vampire be

considered a “dead experience”? Well, anyway, there we have it, after all, it is possible to

experience boredom which some consider a deadening experience. On the other hand, one

might argue with Baldesarri’s statement which may have been primarily only intended to

attract attention by injecting the thought that an imaginative artist looks forward to a blank

canvas for the exciting experience it promises to give hm once he starts mutilating it. Now

“mutilating” may seem like a pejorative term to use in connection with the august occupation

of picture making but that may be considered a form of masquerade disguising a kind of

celebratory event as a consequence of a loss…not unlike one’s first born. Most creative artists

I know of seem to find a virgin canvas most inviting.

But what has his to do with the work of Baldessari? Well, the relationship appears a little

perverse but if we take a lead from Wikipedia “seemingly legitimate art concerns were intended

by Baldessari to become hollow and ridiculous when presented in a self-referential manner” and

when one reflects upon some of his more characterisic works such as this

Page 9: Baldessari by Paul Henrickson, Ph.D

and this or this the concepts of “hollowness” and

“ridiculous” are sufficiently underscored to be accepted as being genuinely descriptive. Baldesarri’s

performance is this regard appears to support my contention that an artist cannot avoid enacting a

self-portrait even, as it would appear, when he intentionally wishes to discredit, diminish and

demolish significant achievement.

Somewhat following in his footsteps was one Terry Taggart, now of Albuquerque, New Mexico whose

works are presented here. While there are significant

differences between the products of these two artists I think it safe to assume that the influence of

one to the other is apparent.

The most obvious similarity is that both have taken a prior-existant image, a photograph, and have

superimposed over selected areas a flat, relatively undifferentiated color plane. Also in common, but

less obviously, is their attitude tpward an entire array of social contacts which the business of picture

making , and its industry, implies. That is, any contact involved in the production of the work wherein

there is a value exchanged or a public announcement or display. The system, as it presently exists,

does so on the premise that the public, by and large, will believe what it is told and, consequently, the

system which includes, the artist, the journal art critic (most often), the gallery director and quite

frequently the musem expert find themselves in some voluntary conspiracy to defraud an ignorant

market.

What I personally and increasingly find intolerable is the shift in emphasis from the developing visual

aesthetic perception of the observer to the clever, seductively insinuating , (if not nausiatingly

sacharine) rhetoric praising , as though in apotheatic adoration work that even fails to approach the

commonplace.

Page 10: Baldessari by Paul Henrickson, Ph.D

At rescue in the sidelines, if he cares, or has the intellectual equipment to do, is the

experienced observer who, very often a philosopher at heart, has the opportunity and the

obligation to present evidence to the less aware that will be helpful in putting the product

where it belongs.

Although there are the cases of Taggart and Baldessari where more evidence of some minium

virtue exists than with the later Romans who , in some futile attempt to glorify their

politicians blatantly stole already existing statuary and merely changed the name ,there isn’t

a great deal.

Between the two of them (Baldessary and Taggart), however, it is evident that Baldessari has

more courage, or is it chutzpa(?) by virtue of the fact that, in some cases, the areas of the

original which he covers up are more significant if only because of their size and there does

seem to emerge, on occasion, just a hint of a possible meaning. Of course, it is, at least

theorhetically possible, that Baldessari is ennunicating a language with greater meaning than

I am able to discern and I am open to that possibility and await a convincing argument.

But what does Baldessari say about himself? In an interview with a Nicole Davis he replied: JB: I always had this idea that doing art was just a masturbatory activity, and didn't really help anybody. I

was teaching kids in the California Youth Authority, an honor camp where they send kids instead of

sending them to prison. One kid came to me one day and asked if I would open up the arts and crafts

building at night so they could work. I said, "If all of you guys will cool it in the classes, then I'll baby-sit

you." Worked like a charm. Here were these kids that had no values I could embrace, that cared about art

more than I. So, I said, "Well, I guess art has some function in society," and I haven't gotten beyond that

yet, but it was enough to convince me that art did some good somehow. I just needed a reason that

wasn't all about myself.

This statement by Baldesari strikes me as possibly true, quite probably true, for, I

believe, that for him stating the obvious in a shockingly outspoken way is his best

defense against being called a fake and will allow any possible opponent to be

momentarily perplexed as to where any meaning might lie. I too, have met on some few

occassions, students who under the umbrella of my mentorship took flight as if on a

spark of genious on a project of their own.

What the anecdote lacks is any further evidence of there being more values to art than

those intuitively sensed by the local ragazzi. And to Baldessari’s credit he acknowledged

he could only contribute the service of baby sitting. The only question remaining in my

mind is how could the California University system could justify keeping him on, that is,

if they followed the usual rules for hiring accredited teachers.Is it possible that the

authorities recognized in the possibly uncouth, rather rude personality of Baldessari

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some element that they felt might help in comunicatng with the socially undisciplined?

And a related question might be is there a correlation between the brutal imagry of

making null the conceptual fabric of an extant work and behavior that gets one assigned

to a reformatory?

There is one idea that occurs to me and it seriusly involves current anti-semtic

prohibitions and in this case Paul Brach who, about the time Baldessari indicated he

moved to Los Angeles from the San Diego branch of the California University System

headed the art department there and very soon and very clearly made it plain he wanted

only Jews in the department. Additionally while Paul Brach may have been close to 6 feet

in heigth being in close physical standing to one who measured at leat 7 inches taller

might have been found intimidating. And, for sure, Brach, would have treated Baldessari

with racial disdain just s he had done the Scots painter who was (but not for long) a

member of the faculty when I visited there.

In this interview with Davis, Baldessari recounts a discussion at a local hangout in New

York, I believe, where either another faculty or painter asks a provocative question back in

the late ‘60s, hanging out in New York at Max's Kansas City. You'd just go there every night, and it's like

every artist, always at least six, ten or eight artists at the same table. And, I said something, some art

idea, and you could hear a pin drop. And someone said, "Well, how does that fit into art history?" And, I'm

thinking inside, "Who the fuck cares?" …Out here you don't worry about how things fit into art history. You

just do what you're going to do.

I believe this account to be not only true in itself as an experience Baldessari has had,

but it is also vitally true in describing the creative artist’s primary responsibility (probably

since 1850 and certainly since the advent of Jackson Pollack) that he, the artist, become more

aware of how he reponds, how his neuro-mental-psychic construction informs the

character of the end product. Or to turn this coin over, how well is the critic able to

reconstruct from evidences in the work the pathway of its evolution and from that how

the work portrays the creator of it. The sadness involved in all of this Baldessari

remaking is that it seems while he has taken the first step in deconstruction he seems to

Page 12: Baldessari by Paul Henrickson, Ph.D

have a very limited awareness of his responsibiity to reconstruct…or, perhaps, I expect

too much. Richter Katz

Employing generalizations succinctly, Richter destroys any evidence of any

formr life form, even more than Baldessari and Taggart just blindly follows

along and Katz transforns a life form into a carboard inanity while Andrew

Wyeth almost always challenges us to reconsider meaning.

It would be correctly stated

that Richter is the only one of these artists thus far mentioned who seems to

work from a non-objective point of view. But this is not always true, yet, there

does seem to be in Richter’s attitude a feeling of disinterest in subject.

Baldessari, on the other hand would like to obiterate it and Katz seems

incapable of recognizing anything beyond the most superficial and Wyeth

gently, but firmly, pushes the observer into a position where he is unable to

Page 13: Baldessari by Paul Henrickson, Ph.D

avoid recognizing there being a complete ambiance of affective meaning

embodied in the simplest formal composition.

Main Entry: iro·ny

Pronunciation: \ˈī-rə-nē also ˈī(-ə)r-nē\

Function: noun

Inflected Form(s): plural iro·nies

Etymology: Latin ironia, from Greek eirōnia, from eirōn dissembler

Date: 1502

1 : a pretense of ignorance and of willingness to learn from another assumed in order to make the other's false

conceptions conspicuous by adroit questioning —called also Socratic irony

2 a : the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning b : a usually

humorous or sardonic literary style or form characterized by irony c : an ironic expression or utterance

3 a (1) : incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result (2) : an

event or result marked by such incongruity b : incongruity between a situation developed in a drama and the

accompanying words or actions that is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play —called also

dramatic irony, tragic irony synonyms see WIT

O.K. I can agree, in part at least, wih the idea that irony plays a role in both

Baldessari’s work and his comments about his work, but isn’t it ironic,

basicly, because Baldessari has chosen to ignore, or is unable to recognize,

more substantial values in the activity of picture making than the rather

limited and inconsequentially critical implications his work attaches to the

endeavors of some in the larger field? If, his aim is to point up, however

ironically, the limited comprehension of some artists and some critics and

most patrons and their absence of an experienced vocabulary why, in the

name of the everlastig universe, does he choose to colored-balloon out people’s

faces? Is he perhaps, misplacing his irony onto the compassionate and

Page 14: Baldessari by Paul Henrickson, Ph.D

disparing view of Edvard Munch.

On the other and we might consider the possibility that dealing with highly

traumatic issues are so petrifying he is, simply, unable to conceptualize a

response, that is, an adequately artful one. Instead he opts for ridicule. This is,

after all, a fairly common response to undealable challenges. If this is true,

than Baldessari is, consistent with one of my theories, dealing with his

problem. But is it, therefore, reasonable that such a meager effort be

institutionalized and nationalised to the level where he is presented as

representing the mind-set of an entire nation?

While he may be dealng with his problem in his way, the results, which may

solve his problem as he perceives it forces another one upon his audience

which either must submit to his jocular bullying or stand up to the challenge

and shrink it to its proper size.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6eSfKeJ_VM (singing Sol Le Witt). I find this attempt at the reconstrucion of iconoclatic results, mildly amusing, but, even more importantly, there are some elementary elements of creative thought, which, regretably, seem never to be brought to fruition either in his own eorks or in this example of concertizing…instead, great stisfaction with his juvenile ridicule is apparent.

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The following report by Christopher Miles may give us clue as to the importance of Balessari’s behavior at least to himself if no one else:

When I visited John Baldessari, the first thing he showed me after introducing me to his dog, Giotto, was a

reproduction of a Velázquez he saw recently at the Prado – a painting he appreciates for the way its

representational imagery yields to a kind of embedded abstraction. Such an interest in Old Masters might seem

odd for an artist who famously burned most of the paintings in his studio four decades ago. That radical gesture

marked the end of what one might call Baldessari’s first career (that of an abstract painter) and the beginning of

his second career and emergence as a conceptual artist. But that career would come back to an intensive

studio practice and an intimate involvement with making things by hand.

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. The seemingly legitimate art concerns were intended by Baldessari to become hollow and ridiculous when presented in such a purely self-referential manner……..hhhmmmm, maybe

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 found 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.

Pointing

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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. One might well wonder the degree of indifference on Baldessari’s part.

The major difference, I believe, between Baldessari’s approach to reality and O’Keeffe’s approach is that Baldessari doesn’t like what he sees and O’Keeffe does. If Baldessari say an inset he thought ugly he’d stomp on it while O’Keeffe would pick it up and study it.

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Oris Cross

And while Doris Cross described herself to me as a “destructionist” which I understood to mean tht she was merelty trying on the costume to see if it fit, I noticed in her subsequent work the process of destruction was giving way to one of construction. Whether that chnge had anything to do with our frequent discussions I cnnot say.

David Hockney, on the other hand, seems to me to waver between a good little boy and doing what he’s told to being purposefully a little irritant , feeling, perhaps, that as a “good little boy” he was unrecognize as to who he felt himself to be, but as a destructive irritant he made it…despite the fact the audience was still not bright enough to understand.

David Hockney

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I am presenting three of my own collaged works as potential examples of destruction ermerging into another form. It is inevitable, generally speaking, that generations succeed their fathers…and the pain of the difference is the difference…unless one gets far enough away from it.

and five

examples of painted sculpture desined to go beyond the aesthetics of the Greek and the tribal.

It is my contention that the main difference between the work of Georgia O’Keeffe on the one hand and th productsd of Baldessari, Taggart amd Richter on the other is the difference between the changes in organic form brought about by observation and the destruction inflicted in response to frustration, anger and self-hatred. If this difference is generational and that it might be said that between 1887 the year of O’Keeffe’s birth and 1931 that of Baldessari we

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.