A portrait of the artist as an inspiring teacher: this publication focuses on Baldessari's practice at the intersection between
pedagogy and art. Visually organized in alphabetical order,
Learning To Read features essays, artworks, a chronology, and personal insights on Baldessari's teaching and influence by a group of the artist's former students and CalArts collaborators such as
Ashley Bickerton,
Liz Craft,
Meg Cranston,
Matt Mullican, and
Tony Oursler.
As
ludic and non-authoritarian as John Baldessari's art, this new monograph on the “father of Conceptual art” is dedicated to his practice as an artist and a teacher, and the many ways in which both practices intertwine in his life. Having been trained as an arts educator, John Baldessari is today renowned for his work as much as for his innovative post studio class at CalArts, Los Angeles, where he has formed many generations of artists and participated in shaping the West Coast art scene.
Visually organized in alphabetical order, “Learning to Read with John Baldessari”—which accompanies a retrospective of his work at Museo Jumex, Mexico City, from November 11, 2017, to April 8, 2018—gathers together a comprehensive essay on the artist's approaches to art making and teaching, a biography of the artist as a teacher, artworks reproduced thematically, and many stories and anecdotes told by former students such as Liz Craft, Ed Henderson, Matt Mullican, Tony Oursler, David Salle, about their years at CalArts, and the uniqueness and serious playfulness of their formation. Emphasizing Baldessari's works in which language, task making, and learning processes are tackled, this publication highlights what the artist describes as the central function of art making: to communicate in a way that people can understand.
Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at Museo Jumex, Mexico City, from November 11, 2017, to April 8, 2018.
John Baldessari (1931-2020) is a key proponent of
Conceptual art and one of the most important figures in contemporary art of the last forty years. Since his sensational "Cremation Project" in 1970, which involved burning all the paintings he had made between 1953 and 1966, his work has revolved around the relationships between language and image as forms of expression. In his painting, photography, film/video, collage, and reliefs, Baldessari has explored the mechanisms of media representation, as well as the subject of artistic work itself. Early on, Baldessari began integrating images and text from advertising and movies into his works and building up a large archive of film stills, publicity, and press photographs. This image material is then contrasted, cropped, and processed in numerous variations and visual realizations. From 1980, the artist worked mostly without text in series of photographs and pictures, while continuing to deal with conflicts and constructions of narrative content. Over the course of his oeuvre, overpainting, voids, gaps, and withheld information increasingly take on the function of the language evoked within the viewer.
published in December 2017
English edition
22,5 x 28 cm (hardcover, cloth binding)
312 pages (66 color ill. & 91 b/w ill.)
ISBN : 978-3-03764-518-5
EAN : 9783037645185
sold out
