Curatorial Tour for Master of Appropriation
Exhibitions Manager Zemie Barr has put together a curatorial tour for those of you who would like to delve more deeply into our current exhibition of John Baldessari’s work. The videos may be viewed above or through Blue Sky’s YouTube channel.
We have posted the transcripts for Part 1 and Part 2 below with some links to additional information to enrich your experience of the exhibition.
Part 1
Hello, thank you for taking the time to join me on this tour of our current exhibition, Master of Appropriation: Found Photography in the Work of John Baldessari from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation. I’m Zemie Barr, the Exhibitions Manager at Blue Sky, and it’s a pleasure to be able to share some of my thoughts about a project that has been in the works for quite some time.
It’s a little ironic that John Baldessari’s work is being shown at Blue Sky, a gallery dedicated to photography, because when he first started making art he didn’t want to be labeled a photographer, but rather as an artist that worked with photography. But perhaps this setup is perfect for an artist who also brought a sense of humor into his work, as he focused on the absurdity of life, as well as the seemingly arbitrary way that meaning is created through text and images.
The name of the exhibition, “Master of Appropriation,” is one of many informal titles that the artist has received over the years (check out this video for more: A Brief History of John Baldessari, narrated by Tom Waits) due to his use of found imagery in his work. This process of borrowing images for artmaking is not new—artists have been recycling images, text, and ideas for a long time—but Baldessari does it in a way that is decidedly his own.
We have two galleries for exhibiting work at Blue Sky, and the show is sequenced chronologically, with the artist’s earliest works in the front gallery and his most recent work in the back. Although this is not the most adventurous curatorial structure, I wanted to give those less familiar with Baldessari an idea of how his process of working with found imagery has progressed over time.
When approaching his work, I think it’s helpful to think of viewing as a game, one that asks us as viewers to fill in the blanks that the artist has left out, keeping in mind that we may never definitively “solve” the conceptual or visual puzzle. For me, the process of trying to get there is where the fun is, so I’m looking forward to “nerding-out” a little bit with all of you and sharing some of my insights into the prints on view.
The earliest piece we have on view is one of the first things you will see when you walk into the first gallery. It is called Black Dice, from 1982, and it is Baldessari’s first experimentation with the printmaking techniques of etching and aquatint. Unlike many of his other works in the Blue Sky show, it contains a great deal of the artist’s direct mark-making on the etching plates that were used to make the portfolio. This is why I’m drawn to this piece: it is probably the most abstract and painterly work on view, yet photography still plays an important role.
Baldessari began by creating nine photo etchings using a film still from the 1948 film Black Dice (originally released as No Orchids for Miss Blandish in the UK and based on the risqué crime novel of that same name). Intended to be installed in a three-by-three grid to reference the original image, each print contains a recognizable element from the photograph, such as a lamp or telephone, yet the artist’s additional gestures made with various etching techniques work to disorient the viewer. The faces from the original film still are also left out of the etchings, a choice that seems to be a precursor to Baldessari’s use of colorful dots to cover faces. All of these interventions discourage attaching narrative or emotional content to the work, and instead move the focus to visual play.
Speaking of play, much of the artist’s work focuses on systems and numbering, but in a way that often seems arbitrary or unnecessarily detailed. Baldessari often seems to be poking fun at the assumed seriousness of organizing information in this way. A few excellent examples of this in the front room are Two Unfinished Letters and Six Colorful Gags (Male). In Two Unfinished Letters, the title is confusing because we are presented with a 4x2 grid of eight images of hands holding letters. The original images, most likely taken from found film stills, have been translated into black and white lithographs with blocks of bright, screen-printed color covering six of these letters. This becomes yet another one of Baldessari’s visual challenges for the viewer. Are we seeing only two letters, photographed multiple times? The progression of movement from frame to frame has a cinematic feel, suggesting that perhaps this composition is meant to mimic two film strips of stacked images pushed together.
Much like Two Unfinished Letters, which is dated 1992-1993, Six Colorful Gags (Male) from around the same time (1991), brings together found images - most likely film stills - that are cropped and altered through various printmaking processes, and reconfigured into a grid. Here, the title also presents a bit of a riddle for the viewer: “Gags” can refer to the hands or other objects silencing the six pictured men, but this word can also mean “a joke.” Similarly, the print is visibly “colorful,” thanks to the artist’s use of aquatint, but colorful can also mean “lively” or “exciting.” It is hard to know if what is happening in each image is just a joke or something more sinister (or a little bit of both), but Baldessari leaves it to us as viewers to decide for ourselves.
Moving to the next wall, we see Hand and Chin (with Entwined Hands), which is part of the same portfolio as Six Colorful Gags made at Crown Point Press in San Francisco in 1991. You can probably see the aesthetic similarities due to the same photogravure and aquatint techniques. If you look closely, you’ll also notice that that top image appears right-side-up and the lower one seems to be placed upside down, creating a somewhat ambiguous composition. Baldessari’s descriptive title gives us a clue, but again, it is what he leaves out or that seems a little “off” that the artist is wanting us to try to puzzle out.
Love and Work, also from 1991, is another puzzle with clues provided in the title. In this narrow vertical print, an out-of-focus image of what seems to be a framed piece of art floats at the top, with a long section of black ink leading the eye to two sets of clasped hands at the bottom. The narrowness of the composition accentuates the distance separating the art in the background, which I interpret as the representation of “work” (as in, “work of art” as well as Baldessari’s profession), from the hands in the foreground, which it seems reasonable to assume symbolize “love.” In addition to distance, there is an imbalance between the two components with “work” out-of-focus and “love” in focus. Right now, this imbalance seems particularly apropos, as we are currently coping with drastic changes to the ways we work and love as we attempt to slow the spread of COVID-19.
This, and the three previously mentioned pieces might suggest that the artist is obsessed with hands, but Baldessari has isolated and elevated a range of body parts, such as noses, ears, and even toes, to the primary focus of his compositions throughout his career. However, Baldessari’s focus on the relationship between parts and the larger whole has not been limited to the body; it is also evident in Money (with Space Between), one of two works in the show from the series A French Horn Player, a Square Blue Moon, and Other Subjects made in between 1991-1994.
As you can see, Money (with Space Between) consists of one image that has been printed in two parts. This severs the stack of bank notes and separates the two individuals, yet it becomes clear that both parts of the image, especially keeping the money intact, are required for the transaction pictured here to work. In addition, this piece introduces what has become a signature Baldessari technique: covering faces with colorful dots. As I mentioned previously when discussing Black Dice, the artist started doing this to remove emotions suggested by facial expressions, while also forcing viewers to pay attention to other parts of the image. In this work and in French Horn Player (with Three Contexts—One Uncoded), if you look up-close, you can see that the dots are not completely solid, but instead reveal the artist’s mark making.
The colors of the dots also have meaning based on a code Baldessari devised early-on that continues throughout his work: red signifies danger; green, safety; yellow means chaos, or madness; and blue, perfection. As mentioned in the title, French Horn Player (with Three Contexts—One Uncoded) contains one image—the top one—without a dot, which also happens to be a fairly recognizable still from Star Wars Episode IV depicting an Imperial star destroyer. Perhaps that is coded enough.
In the other images, moving down the vertical line, the artist has placed a red dot for danger that obscures what (or who) lies at the end of the road, a blue dot for perfection over the french horn player’s face, and a yellow dot for chaos over the person (or people) at one end of the canoe, while bears take up the other side. These discs of color, along with the alternating dark backgrounds with bright, outdoor scenes, almost mimic the rhythm of music, as seemingly disparate images are merged together into a new narrative or composition.
If we turn back to Money (with Space Between), the person holding the stack of bills is marked by danger, while the other is marked by chaos. How does this enhance your initial reading of the work?
We have now “walked” through the first half of the exhibition, which focuses on the artist’s work made before the year 2000. I hope you’ve enjoyed this tour and please stay tuned for the second half, when we will venture into the back gallery together to look at some of Baldessari’s more recent work. Until then, please stay safe and healthy until we “meet” again.
Part 2
Welcome back to the second half of my curatorial tour of Master of Appropriation. I’m Zemie Barr, the Exhibitions Manager at Blue Sky, and I’m looking forward to discussing some of John Baldessari’s more recent works, made since the year 2000, currently on view in our back gallery.
But first, before we transition into the back gallery, there are two pieces from the artist’s 2001 Intersections series that are installed across from our Pacific Northwest Drawers that I’d like to talk about. Unlike the rest of the work on view, the Intersections series contains found imagery without any additional printmaking techniques or text. In each print, a narrow horizontal image overlays a vertical one, with the elements from both images merging at the point where they intersect. The portfolio, which contains twelve digital prints in all, is also unlike others in the show because Baldessari printed it himself in his studio in Santa Monica.
In Statue/Bound Person, a vertical image of a nude female statue in a playful, nymphlike pose is combined with a horizontal image of a human body tightly restrained by rope. There is a contrast here between the violent image of the body that is rendered immobile and the sculpture that suggests vitality and movement, yet like many of Baldessari’s works, this visual play also contains the edge of social critique. His pairing of a statue that depicts an idealized female form with a body bound with rope leads me to think of the ways women have been depicted (and restricted by) this role of the (often naked) object of the male gaze throughout the history of Western art.
Hand (with Cigarette), Bottle, Buns/Astronaut (with Four Other Persons), tackles work and home life, a dynamic that has come up before with Love and Work in the last tour. In this piece, Baldessari combines a horizontal section from a domestic interior scene with what looks like a workplace (perhaps NASA?) that many of us may recognize because of the astronaut’s suit. Maybe this is simply a visualization of how home and work, or the private and public spheres, overlap. Or could it also be something more cynical, like the dream of becoming an astronaut overshadowed by the reality of one’s life, made easier by a cigarette, booze, and bread?
After Intersections, Baldessari continued working with narrow vertical and horizontal sections of found photographs in Some Narrow Views (Either Tall or Wide), from 2004, which leads us into the back gallery space. The intimately-sized portfolio of 10 prints contains five vertical photogravures with letterpress text underneath and five horizontal images and corresponding text created using the same processes.
Because each print only contains one image, what the artist chooses to highlight through cropping becomes elevated in importance, while the text below creates another layer of meaning for us to consider in relation to the image. For instance in Stuff, Baldessari has selected from an image a vertical section that we may have overlooked, if not for his cropping. You can see a person’s elbow is still visible near the left edge, providing a hint that the focus (or what our eye would have been drawn to) in the original image may have been the person attached to the elbow.
Similarly, in Abandoned, Baldessari’s horizontal crop centers on a suitcase or briefcase left on the sidewalk, perhaps a detail that we would have missed if not for his visual prompting. However, if we look at Temptation, the added text is not pushing us to notice something we otherwise would have overlooked, but instead to find the relationship between this word and what is happening in the image. Is the money the woman holds a temptation because it belongs to someone else or she plans to spend it irresponsibly, or has Baldessari added this narrative layer over an image of a woman who is simply counting her cash?
Moving to the next wall, we have two pieces from Baldessari’s most recent series in this exhibition. Front Row is a portfolio of screen prints from 2015 that Baldessari made using photos from Fall 2014 runway shows in Paris.
Karl Lagerfeld is a particularly interesting work in this series. The original image is a promotional outtake from Chanel’s supermarket set for their Fall 2014 ready-to-wear show. Baldessari’s screen print version simply highlights the bizarre juxtapositions the original photographer unintentionally captured. Karl Lagerfeld, the late fashion designer, is posing with a shopping cart on Chanel’s supermarket set, dressed all in black with dark sunglasses. The only other elements the artist leaves in the composition are a shelf of nondescript items behind Lagerfeld and the silhouette of a woman in the distance. For this celebrity fashion designer, the supermarket is a novel and innovative setting for his ready-to-wear collection. Baldessari seems to be poking fun at Lagerfeld by drawing attention to the black silhouette of an anonymous woman in the background, emphasizing the designer’s remove, in more ways than one, from those who might actually shop in a supermarket.
Numbered Legs updates some of the visual and conceptual elements one expects to find in Baldessari’s work, such as numbering—you can see that each foot is actually marked with a number—and obscuring faces, but now the artist retains the outlines of these faces and fills them with a range of primary and pastel colors. Each person viewing the Miu Miu show from the front row is now anonymous, so we are free to focus on their legs, and perhaps more importantly, their fashionable shoes. As Baldessari explained in an interview for Harper’s Bazaar, “this is really a lineup of shoes! It's just a quantitative picture, 16 shoes.” However, I would argue it’s not just a quantitative picture; it also draws attention to the social dynamics happening off the runway, among celebrities and fashion enthusiasts. Any status associated with being seen in the front row has been erased along with the faces, with each person now reduced to just another person in the crowd...with great shoes.
Continuing his focus on the relationship between parts and the larger whole, especially when considering the body, Baldessari created his Noses & Ears, Etc. series. We have one print on view from this portfolio: Couple and Man with Gun [cover image for videos above], in which the artist isolates noses and ears while also combining somewhat conflicting subject matter. In the left panel, he has transformed an image of two people embracing into a color lithograph, with the nose of the person on the left left nude against the green color covering the rest of the face, while the shape of the other person’s nose is filled in with red. On the ride side of the print, a pink, almost red, face with a yellow nose floats on a black background while a blue hand holds a gun that retains some of its photo-realism.
Combining love, or lust, on the left with the man and gun on the right isn’t that unusual, as sex and violence are often conflated in various forms of media, yet a tension between the two images remains nonetheless. The pairing makes me pause to think more deeply about why sex and violence so often overlap. Is this a reflection upon toxic masculinity? It is also worth noting that this piece is printed in two pieces rather than on one sheet, with the print on the left slightly overlapping the one on the right. Could this be a subtle indication that the connection between sex and violence is not necessarily a given, that it can be severed?
Baldessari’s 2014 series, The News, includes a similar push and pull between opposing concepts, but in this series he returns to his focus on the relationship between text and images. Each screen print in The News combines an image sourced from a daily newspaper. The texts below each image are the artist’s own descriptions of another image found in the same newspaper. Not surprisingly, these disjointed pairings create a dissonance between image and text that forces us to reconsider what is being depicted.
When viewing Four Young People Looking at Pieces of Paper, it is soon clear that the caption does not reflect what is depicted above. There are two people in the image (not four), and their ages are not easily discernible (or really relevant). As usual, Baldessari obscures visual information through the screen printing process, muddying our reading of the original image. With the clues he does provide us, it seems that this is the scene of a crime or perhaps the aftermath of a serious car crash, with two police officers investigating. The badge on the officer facing us is simply a blurry yellow circle, but its color and placement lead me to that reading. There are also white squares with numbers near one of the blue truck’s tires, which may be crime scene markers, along with two red bars that divide up the image’s composition, much like yellow police tape might have the original image. If we come back to Baldessari’s caption—”Four Young People Looking at Pieces of Paper”— it is not only unrelated but also rather benign in comparison to the aftermath of destruction that we see in the image.
Baldessari seems to be pushing us to be more aware and critical of how information is being delivered, and especially how context affects the meaning of the text and images that we digest. Following this train of thought, In Three Men Leaving House (Flower Planters near Door), we see three men, faces covered. They are embroiled in a conflict, with what looks like teargas or projectiles flying above their heads. The text below the image is somewhat accurate, at least for the first line, but the phrase “Flower Planters near Door” is almost jarring, with this description of serene domesticity in stark contrast to the violent scene above. Did these men leave their houses, with flower planters near the door, before being photographed here? Although the text describes another photograph, Baldessari’s caption allows these two realities to coexist, humanizing the men in the photo and giving them backstories beyond this one moment in time.
The final piece I’m going to talk about in this exhibition is Two Foreheads (One Green), from the artist’s Raised Eyebrows/Furrowed Foreheads. It includes a dramatic combination of two images in which yet another section of the body has been isolated. For the top image, Baldessari has translated a black-and-white image of a heavily-lined forehead into a lithograph, exaggerating the many wrinkles in purple on top of the ghoulishly green skin. In contrast, the bottom image of a younger woman includes her eyes and raised eyebrows, along with a single line highlighted in green on her forehead. The visual comparison of old and young seems obvious, with this illustration of the toll time takes on the body morphing into a surreal exquisite corpse composition.
As facial expressions, raised eyebrows and furrowed brows can also communicate worry, skepticism, or surprise. Although this particular piece may not illustrate this as forcefully as other works in the series (in fact, most of the other works have more sculptural elements), it seems worth noting. The series Raised Eyebrows/Furrowed Foreheads was created in 2008 and 2009 during the last major recession, and Baldessari has been quoted as saying, “Aren’t we all worried? These works may be viewed as depicting that condition.”
I find it helpful to see this piece within its historical context because, as we are again worried about what the future will hold, it is a consolation to know that artists have always been and will continue creating work in response to the current moment. Although John Baldessari is no longer with us, in ten years from now, we may look back on what other artists are making now, and remember how we made it through, together.
Thank you for taking this time to virtually walk through Master of Appropriation with me. All of us at Blue Sky appreciate your continued support as we temporarily move our programming into the digital realm until we can safely meet again in person.
Curator’s note: John Baldessari: A Catalogue Raisonné of Prints and Multiples, 1971–2007 has been an indispensable resource for planning this exhibition and writing the above text. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about the artist’s printmaking practice. - ZB