John Baldessari was born in 1937 in california.
Exhibitions:
He was a conceptual artist known for his found photographs and apropriated images. His main aportation to art has been the question: Why is this so?. He plays off the relation of word, image and meaning; the intersection of what is heard or written, what is seen, and what is understood
He has combinated texts with images (being influence of Barbara Kruger and Cindy Sherman). it was the literary and visual ideas of Dada and Surrealist artists, as well as the work of Marcel Duchamp that introduced Baldessari to the idea of looking beyond the surface of the picture plane to focus on the function of art, rather than its form
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Painting for Kluber 1967
Wrong series is a white and black photography of him in front of a palm tree. Down the image the word Wrong in capital and black letters. He wanted to question who says that, because there is no one who can say an idea is not good. A work that seemed wrong was right for him.
Wrong (1967)
His interest in language comes from its similarities in structure to games, as both operate by an arbitrary and mandatory system of rules. In this spirit, many of his works are sequences showing attempts at accomplishing an arbitrary goal.
Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line .(1973)
Here he was shoting himself throwing the balls in the air trying to make a line during 36 times. Trying to create order from chaos or to look at non-conventional forms of order.
How we do art now? Video . (1973)
Humor is also by-product–a lot of his absurdist ideas are funny and serious at the same time.
Philosophically, Baldessari has a long-standing fascination with the relation of the part to the whole which he has tackled in many ways. He often has asked himself’ ”How much can I leave out of something; when does it cease to be whole?
What Baldessari is doing is formulaic—at every instance, he is rejecting the common view and trying to find a new one by stepping out of conventions and assumptions. Art has the benefit of not needing strong conventions because of its abstract nature–you never have to return to the real world
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