John Baldessari - create and work

John Baldessari - he is one of our most influential artists ever, and that since the late 1960s.

Perhaps the leading proponent of Concept Art been able to impress the art world for so long simply through his outstanding skills in a wide variety of genres and techniques. Or perhaps we simply like his quirky, ironic style and his inimitably dry, sometimes even absurd humor. He has shown us plenty of these traits throughout his career:

John Baldessari's way from the painter to the concept artist

Baldessari began his artistic career with painting, but quickly became dissatisfied with it. He explored color relationships and soon knew which color harmonizes with which other, and decided he was done with this subject.

In the future, he wanted to use color "simply as a signal, like when you come to a traffic light, it's red and that means stop. Not that you sit there, look at the red and say, 'What a beautiful red.' It's simply a signal, that's how I wanted to use color" (John Baldessari's retrospective in his speech at the 2009 Golden Lion awards in Venice).

This covered the period from 1949 to 1966. Numerous works followed that transcended the boundaries of painting, unusual and often very witty experiments in a thorough exploration of the irony of Marcel Duchamp . Towards the end of the 1960s, he decided on Conceptual Art , which would fill his life for the next few years.

This decision was celebrated with a unique event: In 1970, Baldessari caused quite a stir with the "Cremation Project ," a crucial element of which was the public burning of his previous paintings (at least those still in his possession). The ashes of the paintings were processed into biscuits, which were then placed in an urn that became part of the art installation, along with a bronze plaque bearing the dates of birth and death of the destroyed paintings and the biscuit recipe.

Through this action, he achieved that long and complex reports about the art action appear in the press with almost irritating frequency to this day, especially whenever his work is mentioned anywhere. This material is simply excellent: the artist burning his own paintings comes pleasingly close to the common fantasy of the tormented artist struggling for artistic expression, and the action itself provides many images for vivid reporting.

Only malicious tongues claim that Baldessari made a decision motivated both by practical and artistic reasons when he got rid of his old baggage shortly before setting off for a new life, and point out that this action brought him unprecedented publicity.

From this time on, the limitation to canvas and color was definitely history, Baldessari worked on the exploration of the different Interrelations between image and communication, made relationship -rich Photo works, designed completely new text-image series and complex videos. Every technical innovation was immediately tested and artistically processed.

John Baldessari - an artist for intellectual ...

With this, Baldessari can herald the beginning of an exhibition history whose path repeatedly touches on the most important stations of the academically influenced art world, be it in the museums of the American modern art world or at the documenta in Kassel.

In the early 1980s, Baldessari began his conquest of the world through these art centers: Baldessari established his work in the most important strongholds of avant-garde art in the USA – Baldessari exhibited over 30 times in New York, Los Angeles, and Houston, and even more frequently in the rest of the USA, only completely avoiding the conservative Bible Belt. He graced the European centers of modern art with countless exhibitions, and many smaller group exhibitions were also held there.

As a result of this omnipresence, Baldessari has been able to enjoy many honors: for example, the New York Artist Space Exhibition Award (2000), the “Best Show Award” from AICA (International Association of Art Critics) USA for the 2001/2002 season, honorary doctorates from several universities, the Honorary Prize of the Venice Biennale (2009, for his life's work) and, in 2012, the coveted Kaiserring of the city of Goslar.

... with humor

Baldessari sees his art as a hobby and a source of enjoyment, and he is delighted that his imaginative works of art have consistently been and continue to be well received. Over the course of his long career, he has repeatedly emphasized that this enjoyment of art itself is the most important thing to him. In a work from 1973, he repeatedly stated the following statement: "I Will Not Make Anymore Boring Art" ; an impressive 2009 remake on the administration building of the Venice Biennale repeats this statement in capital letters, reaffirming his insight at the time.

Baldessari has consistently captivated viewers throughout his career and with his works. He has created numerous photo collages, his so-called billboards , which puzzle and sometimes delight the viewer. As was the case with the giant $100,000 bill that appeared in 2011 on a billboard next to Manhattan's most fashionable park, the floating "High Line."

His art books, video work and performances were always exciting for the viewer and always contained new ideas, within which Baldessari plays with clichés and standardized views, takes standards and common places of everyday world on the shovel and leads the mass media to absurdity.

Baldessari splits and separates and alienates, covered and constructed several layers, he leaves gaps and creates hide -ups, and then combines the whole thing in image and language so original and unusual that new contexts can be recognized. He uses unspeakably many ideas, only one thing the admirer completely misses with him: the holy seriousness of the established concept artist, Baldessari prefers to approach the matter with an ironic smile.

Typical John Baldessari

Typical for John Baldessari is z. B., to photograph human hands, the owners of which point to the heart of things that are important to have these photos painted by Sunday painters and to exhibit the result with the sub -line “an image of (name of the hobby painter)” as art.

What initially appears to be an odd undertaking, upon closer inspection reveals itself to be an active examination of the process of art creation, with the uncomfortable question underlying it: whose is the resulting artwork, really? Clearly, the exhibited painting itself has had little contact with the artist's genius. The artist's right to sign their work, only won in the Renaissance, must also be confronted with a reflection of this.

This final approach to using painting as a medium emerged as early as 1969, thus making it possible to argue that the break between Baldessari's early paintings and his later photographic and video works is less radical than is often assumed.

Only Baldessari's field of action expands considerably with his departure from painting. He can attempt to teach a potted plant the alphabet with great patience and large letters and record this attempt; he can throw four balls in the air and create a photographic series out of them, using both to once again ironically question traditional concept of art

Of course, Baldessari (with the curious plant) can be seen in the exhibition "Don't Smile", which shows many pages of artistic humors in the Kunsthaus Liechtenstein in January 2013. In the first week of January 2013, 12 metro buses in Los Angeles also recorded their journeys, which were redesigned in the traditional look of old school buses and which Baldessari decorated “Learn to Dream”

On the other side is "Aprende a sonar ," the invitation to dream in Spanish. The action is part of a public campaign about the importance of art (Baldessari supports the non-profit LA Fund for Public Education).

Hopefully the now over 80-year-old artist still has a lot of time to create his art against any kind of overdraft life.