Artist in focus: John Baldessari

December 2010

American born John Baldessari is one of the most influential and experimental artists of his generation.  He became known as a forerunner of conceptual art in the 1960s with his text and image paintings.  With these works Baldessari created new meanings and tensions between images and words and marked a pivotal turning point in Baldessari’s artistic trajectory.

Baldessari attributes some of his experimentation to having grown up in National City, California, a culturally isolated suburb just north of the Mexican border and well beyond the reach of any art scene. "I was trying to find out what was irreducibly art." he says.

Fearlessly brave, one of the artist’s early works was the "Cremation Project" in 1970, when he ceremonially burned nearly all the paintings he had made between 1953 and 1966. "I really think it's my best piece to date," he wrote of it at the time.

Throughout his career, Baldessari's inquisitive approach to making art has forced the boundaries of our perception of art. His sharp insights into the conventions of creating art, the nature of perception, and the relationship between language and images are tempered by a keen sense of humour.  He says "I love the idea that, in a world in which everything has a use, it’s possible to make something gratuitous; and I love to leave people a little unsettled."

Pure Beauty is the artist's current exhibition and is showing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York from 20 October 2010 to 9 January 2011. The exhibition spans nearly half a century and encompasses a wide range of the artists' work including 120 pieces which nearly all contain early paintings, video self-portraits, photo-text pieces and grand-scale collages of found images. Also displayed are his wall-sized arrangements of film stills from the late 1980s, full of illusive juxtapositions and faces partially obscured by his distinctive circle marks with language continuing to play an important role in the form of suggestive titles.

Baldessari was recently asked if an exhibition at the Met sat uncomfortably with his subversive streak, to which he wittily replied "I would be happy to hang in a broom closet at the Met. It’s a huge honour."

Currently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (20 October 2010 - 9 January 2011) Pure Beauty has also been exhibited in Barcelona, London and Los Angeles.

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