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| John Baldessari, Aligning Balls, 1972(Photo from C-Monster.net) |
We are at the crossroads of new ways of thinking about art, and the making of art. Boundaries that have delineated traditional art practices, and so many of the art movements of the last century—Modernism, Conceptual Art, Pop Art, Formalism—to name four — are outmoded. Walking into the John Baldessari exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum, the viewer enters an expansive world, a country waiting to be discovered. Though he is known as a conceptual artist, he uses traditional forms—photography, painting, collage and video—in his work. He finds a perfect tension between the idea and its manifestation as an object in the world.
For me, viewing so much of his work in one place was like diving into a crystal clear pool. His deeply honest and transparent approach to art-making sets him apart from his peers, students and followers. His concepts dictate his use of materials. Baldessari focuses on a few things most important to him: ideas, words, and photography. He steps back, taking his hand out of the art-making process but without sacrificing his sharp eye for putting disparate elements together.
I liked many of the works in the show; one of my favorites was “Aligning Balls” (1972). Baldessari sets himself the task of photographing a red ball thrown up into the air. This forces him to act quickly without regard to properly composing a photo. This piece is a selection of more than thirty small snapshots of a tiny red ball suspended in a calm field of blue. Sometimes there is a cloud afloat in the sky or a treetop nestled on the edge of the image. The pictures are delicately strung together with a drawn dark chalk line on a wall. One must get right on top of the pictures in the small-scale work, creating intimacy with the piece as an object. This is in contrast to the expansive space within each photograph. Round-headed nails, the same size as the red balls, pin the glass-covered photos in place, reinforcing the reality that the installation is itself an object in the world.
His video pieces, though appearing rough and gritty, have a beauty in their repetitive simplicity and honesty. They have a thing-ness about them, much like watching a firefly trapped inside a jar with air-holes punched in the lid. (Baldessari's 1971 video I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art can be seen on vodpod's website.)
As an artist, I am still in the process of making sense of Baldessari’s work and the meaning it holds for me personally. For others who plan on seeing ”Pure Beauty” my advice is to take your time, go slowly, and surrender yourself to each of the works as you come upon them and you will be rewarded over and over again.
Kyle Gallup is an artist who works in collage and watercolor.
5 comments:
The comments for this post were accidentally deleted, this is a recovered reproduction:
I have a different, less generous, take on Baldessari. I feel he doesn't trust his concepts enough so he artsies them up; and he doesn't trust his visuals enough so he tacks on some (usually lame) concept to them. I agree about the "thing-ness" of his videos. They (at least the early videos) cannot in any way be considered arty. But they sure lack any deep conceptual interest.
By Charles Kessler on The Open Road: John Baldessari at the Met on 11/5/10
The comments for this post were accidentally deleted, this is a recovered reproduction:
I am sorry that I could not change your mind. I tried. Perhaps with time we might meet somewhere in the middle. I am still on my honeymoon with the work. Talk to you in a few months about it.
By Kyle Gallup on The Open Road: John Baldessari at the Met on 11/5/10
The comments for this post were accidentally deleted, this is a recovered reproduction:
Your opening paragraph glimpses a new world with respect to our experiences of thinking about and making art--a large claim that at once gave me pause to consider and also urged me to hurry on and learn more. But, Baldassari's impact on you notwithstanding--it was clearly a knock-down experience--I was in the end left wanting to know more about that new world's way of thinking and making, more about HOW your experience of Baldassari eclipses and renders obsolete your--and presumably our--prior experience vis a vis thinking and making.
By Carl Belz on The Open Road: John Baldessari at the Met on 11/6/10
The comments for this post were accidentally deleted, this is a recovered reproduction:
Charles: At the moment(which means that I might not feel this way at another time)I think he does trust his concepts more than anything else and finds ways of expressing them in minimal terms--very lean and what I would call direct or honest. He can do this because he has confidence in his ideas. The visual elements of his work serve his thought process ideas so the two things are completely integrated. He's an artist who is always questioning himself and the world around him and with limited means, expresses his thoughts purely. Maybe in a year, I won't feel this way about his work. I just don't know. I had a good experience seeing the show and that is what my piece was based on. I appreciate your dislike of his work and that we can agree to disagree when we need to.
By Kyle Gallup on The Open Road: John Baldessari at the Met on 11/6/10
The comments for this post were accidentally deleted, this is a recovered reproduction:
Carl, I started this piece a couple of weeks ago and after writing about 1100 words I decide I could not make proper sense of the positive experience I had had while viewing the show. I let it roll around in my mind for awhile and then sat down and wrote the 400 word entry here. "a new world" is a large claim. It's descriptive of my own experience with the work. I had not seen much of Baldessari before this time. I've seen the show twice and I was hoping it would become less complex and I would understand it more before setting out to write. It just hasn't happened. I'm not sure why. There is something about the way I approach my own work and the way he approaches his that when I viewed the show,it created a very large space in my mind. If you can image being in a small room for a very long time and a door appears, you walk through it, and suddenly you are in an enormous mansion with many many rooms to roam through--no doors to the outside or windows that allow you to look out at the See more... world but, interior space. I will think about it some more and if I can come up with a more concrete way of explaining it--I'll post here.
By Kyle Gallup on The Open Road: John Baldessari at the Met on 11/6/10
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