Sweetwater Union High School, National City, California, United States
Sweetwater Union High School where John Baldessari received his secondary education.
College/University
Gallery of John Baldessari
5500 Campanile Dr, San Diego, CA 92182, United States
San Diego State University where John Baldessari obtained his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees.
Gallery of John Baldessari
University of California, Berkley, California, United States
The University of California, Berkley where John Baldessari studied from 1954 to 1955.
Gallery of John Baldessari
9045 Lincoln Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90045, United States
Otis College of Art and Design where John Baldessari studied from 1957 to 1959.
Gallery of John Baldessari
University of California, Los Angeles 90095, California, United States
The University of California in Los Angeles where John Baldessari studied in 1955.
Career
Gallery of John Baldessari
2015
John Baldessari in 2015 with his works on the background. Photo by Manfredi Gioacchini.
Gallery of John Baldessari
2016
John Baldessari near his canvas 'Marilyn' in 2016.
Gallery of John Baldessari
2016
John Baldessari in 2016 in his Venice studio, Los Angeles. Photo by Kirk McKoy.
Gallery of John Baldessari
John Baldessari looking at René Magritte's 'The Treachery of Images' (This Is Not a Pipe) at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Photo by C. Herscovici.
Gallery of John Baldessari
John Baldessari in his studio.
Achievements
Baldessari’s acrylic canvas, ‘Quality Material’ purchased at Christie's in New York City for $4,408,000 in 2007.
Membership
Awards
National Medal of Arts
The National Medal of Arts which John Baldessari received from the then President of the United States Barak Obama in 2014.
John Baldessari looking at René Magritte's 'The Treachery of Images' (This Is Not a Pipe) at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Photo by C. Herscovici.
John Baldessari is an American Conceptual artist. Initially a painter, he switched to collages made from found images, photos (both photos and film stills), and texts exploring in a humorous way the often concealed assumptive character of the modern art and Pop art.
Later, the artist also adopted printmaking, film, video, sculpture, installation, and performance. He is also known as an influential educator.
Background
Ethnicity:
John Baldessari’s father came from Italy, and his mother was from Denmark.
John Baldessari was born on June 17, 1931, in National City, California, United States. He is a son of Antonio Baldessari, a salvage dealer, and Hedvig Jensen, a nurse.
Education
John Baldessari spent his childhood along with his elder sister in Southern California. He attended the Sweetwater Union High School in California.
It was while observing his father who recycled various materials working at different trades that Baldessari later applied the same technique of collecting and re-using to his art.
Encouraged by his sister, Baldessari enrolled at San Diego State College (currently San Diego State University) in 1949 to study art education. He spent four years there and received his Bachelor of Arts degree. Then, he developed an interest in art history and entered the University of California, Berkley in 1954. More passionate about the contemporary art rather than in Renaissance taught there, he first tried to study at the University of California, Los Angeles, and then left the institution completely and came back to his studies at San Diego State College.
Baldessari graduated in 1957 with a Master of Arts in painting. The same year, he enrolled at Otis Art Institute (currently Otis College of Art and Design) where he spent two more years.
Later in his life, John Baldessari has also obtained honorary degrees from the National University of Ireland, San Diego State University, Otis College of Art and Design of Parsons School of Design, and California College of the Arts.
The start of John Baldessari’s career can be counted from 1959 when he joined the staff of the San Diego State College (currently San Diego State University). His talent of a mentor was appreciated, and soon classes in life drawing and lettering were credited to him. It was the beginning of about three decades of teaching, including service at schools, junior colleges, and universities.
While teaching, he continued to work on his paintings which were characterized by the satire of the conventional painting techniques from art instruction manuals. This period, Baldessari experimented insatiably with new methods and approaches. So, in the middle of the 1960s, he almost abandoned his hand-painted canvases and concentrated on collages made of the combinations of text and photographs from newspapers and magazines. The example of such works was ‘Tips For Artists Who Want To Sell’ (1966-1968).
In 1968, the artist accepted the proposition of Paul Brach to teach at the University of California, San Diego. It coincided with his debut solo exhibition at the Molly Barnes Gallery in Los Angeles. In a couple of years, he relocated to Santa Monica where he enlarged the circle of his art colleagues. He earned his living teaching at the California Institute of the Arts. In 1986, he changed the educational post at the institution to another one at the University of California, Los Angeles. He taught there until 2008.
Continuing experiments, in 1970 Baldessari created his new work titled ‘The Cremation Project’. He burned almost all of his paintings done before and used the cider to make cookies which he placed into an urn. It was the symbol of the continuous cycle of life – every created thing would be destroyed and then reincarnate. Another series of the time became Commissioned Paintings in which he proposed to non-professional artists to complete his works by a caption “A painting by...”. The series reconsidered the notion of artistic authorship. It was also the time of some video works for Baldessari who created ‘I Am Making Art’ and ‘Baldessari Sings LeWitt’.
During the decade, the artist also experimented with prints the first of which, ‘I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art’, appeared in 1971. Then, the artist continued and still continue to work with the media. He has collaborated with such notable publishing houses as Arion Press of San Francisco, Brook Alexander Editions of New York, Cirrus Editions of Los Angeles, Crown Point Press of San Francisco, Edition Jacob Samuel of Santa Monica, Gemini G.E.L. of Los Angeles, Mixografia of Los Angeles, Multiples, Multi Editions of Los Angeles, Inc. of New York, and Peter Blum Editions of New York. In 2008, the artist’s prints were used in the Artists for Obama portfolio, a limited edition of 150 pieces issued by Gemini G.E.L.
At the turn of the 1980s, John Baldessari produced his first synthesized photomontages for which he applied stills from B-movies creating from them a new story. In 1981, he had his first retrospective in the United States organized by the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City. The exhibition traveled around the country and abroad and was shown in the Netherlands and Germany. Another method typical for his works of the period was covering photographed or painted portraits with circular dots, as he did in ‘Bloody Sunday’ (1987) or in more recent ‘Stonehenge with Two Persons’ (2005). In 1994, “Artist's Choice: John Baldessari” was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
The beginning of the 21st century was also rich on events for the artist. He produced ‘Noses and Ears’ and ‘Arms and Legs’ series which featured parts of the human body. In 2006, Baldessari tried his hand as a curator and managed the ‘Ways of Seeing: John Baldessari Explores the Collection’ exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. The same year, he designed ‘Magritte and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images’ at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He also applied his design talents creating a huge image for the 2017/2018 season at the Vienna State Opera.
Baldessari has exhibited his art around the world. He has participated in such major shows as Documenta exhibitions in Kassel, Germany, the Whitney Biennial, Venice Biennial, the Carnegie International, as well as in various art spaces in Austria, Italy, Mexico, and other countries. The recent retrospectives of his works include 2017 ‘Learning to Read with John Baldessari’ at Museo Jumex in Mexico City and a 2018 show at Marian Goodman Gallery in New York City.
Nowadays, John Baldessari shares his time between Santa Monica and Venice, California. The current representatives of his art include Marian Goodman Gallery, Margo Leavin, and Sprüth Magers art gallery in London and Berlin.
Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line
Commissioned Painting: A Painting by Pat Nelson
Woman with Pillow
Stairway, Coat and Person
print
Graduation
Engraving With Sound: Belch
sculpture
Sailboat
Beethoven's Trumpet (With Ear)
Jacob´s Ladder: Love (Yellow, Red, Blue and Black and White); War (Orange, Violet, Green and Black and White)
Dyptich part 2 Ear Clip
work of art
Suppose it is true after all? WHAT THEN?
Blood (For Raymond Carver)
The Fallen Easel
Pig: Maquette for the Elbow Series (A3)
Hog: Maquette for the Elbow Series (A1)
Painting for Kubler
A Two-Dimensional Surface Without Any Articulation Is a Dead Experience
Pure Beauty
Fox: Maquette for the Elbow Series (B1)
Money, with Space Between
Ass: Maquette for the Elbow Series (A2)
Prima Facie (Fifth State)
Flying Saucer and Cloud (Blue)
Box (Blind Fate & Culture)
Views
John Baldessari believes that images and text are similar in a functional way because they both use codes to transmit their messages which often have the same, sometimes, standardized meaning.
Quotations:
"I think art, if it's meaningful at all, is a conversation with other artists. You say something, they say something, you move back and forth."
"Talent is cheap, you have to be possessed or obsessesed, rather. You really have to feel like you cannot not do art, and that is something you can't will."
"I think when I'm doing art, I'm questioning how to do it."
“I’ve often thought of myself as a frustrated writer. I consider a word and an image of equal weight, and a lot of my work comes out of that kind of thinking.”
“I guess a lot of it's just lashing out, because I didn't know how to be an artist, and all this time spent alone in the dark in these studios and importing my culture and constant questions. I'd say, 'Well, why is this art? Why isn't that art?”
“If I saw the art around me that I liked, then I wouldn't do art.”
"I will not make anymore boring art."
“I've always done what I want. Luckily I'm blessed with a well-developed sense of absurdity – it's what saved me.”
“I go back and forth between wanting to be abundantly simple and maddeningly complex.”
Membership
John Baldessari is the member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Interests
language
Connections
John Baldessari married Carol Ann Wixom, a Montessorian teacher, in 1960. The family produced two children named Annamaria and Tony. John and Carol Ann divorced in 1984.
John Baldessari
The volume provides a fascinating look at the art of John Baldessari.
1990
More Than You Wanted to Know About John Baldessari
This first volume of JRP|Ringier’s complete John Baldessari writings project traces the genesis and development of the artist’s understanding of art in the early 1960s.
2013
John Baldessari Catalogue Raisonné. Volume Two: 1975–1986
Compiling four-hundred-plus unique works of art, the second volume the Catalogue Raisonné traces the shifts and developments in conceptual artist John Baldessari’s work from 1975-86.
2014
John Baldessari: Pure Beauty
The monograph published in conjunction with a major exhibition organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Tate Modern in London contains more than 400 full colored illustrations of the artist and eleven essays by critics, curators, and art historians.