Give me a B, give me an A ... & etc. 2009 From the portfolio Forty Are Better Than One 10-part leporello, digital pigment print (Ditone) on 188 g Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, 32 x 250 cm (12½ x 98½ in). Edition: 75, signed and numbered.
Eyebrow 2009 Digital print, laminated with lexan, mounted on shaped aluminum with acrylic paint. 127 x 40.5 x 15 cm (50 x 16 x 6 in.). Edition of 25, with a signed and numbered certificate.
The relationship between saying and showing, language and image is in the case of John Baldessari as with no other artist of his generation the subject of intensive artistic research. Following his radical renunciation of painting around 1970, he started working primarily with visual material and, until 1980, with texts from the mass media. The artist takes his images out of their contexts, elaborates them by means of retouching, painting over, contrasting and cutting. He has developed an unmistakeable style, distinguished by the superimposition of photographs and painted areas, and his canvases also comprise printed reproductions. These are the means he uses in his ironic play with pop culture. Baldessari has taught and influenced generations of artists. His most recent work consists primarily of film stills of faces and bodies that are largely covered by layers of paint or collage or altered by the superimposition of paint over the foreheads and eyebrows.
From the portfolio Forty Are Better Than One
