* 1931 in National City, California, USA. Lives and works in Santa Monica and Venice, California.
American Artist
Known for: Text Paintings and Conceptual Art Works, often featuring found photography and appropriated images; Black-and-white photographs covered with colorful dots in front of the faces Historical context: Conceptual Art
Exhibited works
| A Brief History of John Baldessari, 2012. BF | A | A major figure in the art of nothing, John Baldessari has been considered one of the most influential artists to emerge since the mid-1960s. The short documentary A Brief History of John Baldessari, 2012, which is narrated by Tom Waits and directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, features some of Baldessari's key works. | |
| Cremation Project, 1970 2nd | B | On July 24, 1970, Baldessari burned all the paintings in his possession that he had produced between 1953 and 1966 in a crematorium in San Diego. Allegedly, he burned hundreds of works. He declared this act of destruction a work of art and entitled it Cremation Project. “I really think it's my best piece to date,” he wrote of it at the time. The number of paintings he burned is not known. Baldessari has photos of the destroyed works, but he has never published them. Approximately 90 paintings from the period 1953–1966 survived the Cremation Project, because at that time they were not in the artist's possession. With this seminal work, Baldessari officially ended his career as a painter, instead shifting his focus to the editing of found and appropriated images and texts. The ashes of the paintings have been kept in a book-shaped urn with a plaque that reads: "JOHN ANTHONY BALDESSARI May 1953 March 1966." | |
| Everything is purged from this painting but art, no ideas have entered this work, 1966. BF | A | (The painting can be seen here) | |
| I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art, 1971. BF | A
| Black and white video: 31 min. 17 sec., sound / Lithograph, 57 cm x 76.4 cm. Shortly after Cremation Project, Baldessari proclaimed "I will not make any more boring art," a promise he's adhered to the present day. The statement was repeated in neat cursive script the entire length of a sheet of lined paper. The print was created in 1971 at the Canadian Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, but not by John Baldessari himself, as he noted: "As there wasn’t enough money for me to travel to Nova Scotia, I proposed that the students voluntarily write 'I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art' on the walls of the gallery, like punishment. To my surprise they covered the walls." Those same students made this print in a workshop, where Baldessari was also not present. He just gave them short instructions but did not supervise them. Thus, this work raises interesting questions: Who is the author of this work? What is the role of the artist? Baldessari committed his own version of the piece to videotape. Like an errant schoolboy, he dutifully writes "I will not make any more boring art" over and over again in a notebook for the duration of the tape. In an ironic disjunction of form and content, Baldessari's methodical, repetitive exercise deliberately contradicts the point of the lesson – to refrain from creating 'boring' art.
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| Links Baldessari.org | Tate | Marian Goodman gallery | Galerie Sprüth Magers | Saatchi gallery | Margo Leavin gallery | Gallery of Lost Art | Further informations 1 | 2 | ||