LEARNING FROM EARLY JOHN BALDESSARI

The Backs of All the Trucks Passed While Driving from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara, California, Sunday, 20 January 1963


A Painting That Is Its Own Documentation, 1966-1968


Everything is Purged, 1966-1968


Clement Greenber, 1966-1968


Tips for Artists Who Want to Sell, 1966-1968


Econ-O-Wash, 14th and Highland, National City, Calif., and Looking East on 4th and C, Chula Vista, Calif., 1966-1968



California Map Project Part I: California, 1969


Goodbye to Boats (Sailing Out), 1972-1973


Goodbye to Boats (Sailing In), 1972-1973


One Rented Painting Hung Crookedly, 1971


Baldessari Sings LeWitt, 1972
Baldessari sings each of Sol LeWitt's Sentences on Conceptual Art, an aphoristic manifesto consisting of 35 statements that LeWitt published in 1969. Each sentence is sung to a different pop tune after the model of Ella Fitzgerald Sings Cole Porter.


John Baldessari is such an influential artist to artists of my generation who often quote and recreate his work, that I thought it would be interesting to visit and re-learn from the original sources. Unfortunately, the security man stoped me before I could do any photograph of Baldessari's 1969 Commisioned Paintings, where amateur artists would do paintings to his specifications and which have also been higly influential to later generation of artists, including to Francis Alys' 1993-97 'Sign Painting Project'.

Sadly, it also seems the new economy has affected Tate Modern, and now you don't get the free useful exhibition guides when you visit (well i guess most visitors threw them to the trash afterwards anyway!). "The Tate is going green", the man at the entrance of the exhibition told me, but between you and me he said "I think they're just on a budget!", and laughed.

Read a conversation between John Baldessari and curator Jessica Morgan here.

John Baldessari
Pure Beauty
curated by Jessica Morgan and Leslie Jones
Tate Modern 13 October 2009 – 10 January 2010
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/johnbaldessari