Baldessari by Paul Henrickson, Ph.D. tm.

© 2010

John Baldessari

John Baldessari in Venice, 2009

June 7, 1931 (1931-06-07) (age 78)

Born
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

John Baldessari
Beethoven's Trumpet (With Ear), Opus 127 2007
Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York © John Baldessari
Resin, 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
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
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.
 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
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
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
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 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.

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
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
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 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

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.
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
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.

O risCo rs
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

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 have the emergence of Paul Cezanne

and Max Beckman 1839-

1906 and 1884-1950, respectively.
It might seem that in the intervening years , the
approximate century some of us have lost the idea,
despite our rhetoric, that communiction beyond an
expression of negation is a worthy aim. At any rate,
Balderi hs given us cause for comment.
 .