PRINTS
Baldessari, John; Multiples Inc.; Marian Goodman Gallery
U.S. (1931 - 2020 )
Two Figures (One with Shadow)
1986
Photogravure and aquatint on BFK Rives paper
19 7/8 x 19 3/8 in. (50.5 x 49.2 cm) image size; 20 x 19 3/4 in. (50.8 x 50.2 cm) sheet size; 27 1/8 x 26 3/8 x 1 1/4 in. (68.9 x 67 x 3.2 cm) frame size
Gift from the Collection of Steven Johnson and Walter Sudol
FA 97.316.1

The conceptual artist John Baldessari uses photomontage to challenge the way we read images. Rather than provide the viewer with pictures that are easy to digest, the artist reworks their appearance and meaning to challenge our perceptions. He often disrupts an image by adding or subtracting formal elements that ultimately redirect how we come to understand the composition. Here three prints bring together seemingly unrelated images, forcing us to question how and why their content is connected. In Two Boats, Baldessari pairs black and white images of large groups of people. He places four green and red “price stickers” over certain faces, strategically altering the photos. This act of covering up specific individuals divides the viewer’s attention — on the one hand, the gaze re-focuses on other details in the image and on the other, it is repeatedly drawn back to the colorful circles. As we examine the work in its entirety, we struggle to develop a new meaning for what were once two distinctly separate, yet oddly familiar images. Such small alterations keenly dramatize our impressions of what look like commonplace pictures. His juxtapositions are absurd and confusing; Baldessari deftly balances humor with a sense of foreboding. -- Label copy for Vortexhibition Polyphonica: Opus I, October 3, 2009 to February 9, 2010.

John Baldessari’s work falls into an ‘in between’ of mediums, synthesizing photography and painting into a powerful conceptual statement. His decision to use appropriated images at once critiques the forms and techniques of common media imagery and uses them to highlight their sometimes under-recognized symbolic value. Baldessari’s figures operate as ready-made stencils, acting the part of passionate lovers or heroic adventurers, yet absent of any essential identity. The viewer may appropriate the figure’s identity for him/herself and take on an archetypal persona, while remaining fully aware of its limitations as a means of communicating meaning.

John Baldessari was born in 1931 in National City, California. He attended San Diego State University and did post-graduate work at Otis Art Institute, Chouinard Art Institute, and the University of California at Berkeley. He taught at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, CA from 1970 - 1988 and the University of California at Los Angeles from 1996 - 2007. His work has been featured in more than 200 solo exhibitions and in over 1000 group exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe. His projects include artist books, videos, films, billboards and public works. His awards and honors include memberships in the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Americans for the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award, the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, the BACA International 2008, and the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, awarded by La Biennale di Venezia in 2009.

-- Label copy for Now Here is also Nowhere: Part I, October 27, 2012, to January 6, 2013.