PHOTOGRAPHS; PRINTS
Baldessari, John; Multiples Inc.; Marian Goodman Gallery
U.S. (1931 - 2020 )
Large Door
1986
Photogravure and aquatint on BFK Rives paper
19 1/2 x 37 3/4 in. (49.5 x 95.9 cm) image size; 19 3/4 x 38 in. (50.2 x 96.5 cm) sheet size; 26 3/4 x 44 3/4 x 1 1/4 in. (68 x 113.7 x 3.2 cm) frame size
Gift from the Collection of Steven Johnson and Walter Sudol
FA 97.316.3

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.