John Baldessari

In this essay I will discuss the work of John Baldesarri and in particular his 1971 piece I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art. To place the work in the appropriate context I first intend to discuss the nature and philosophy surrounding the emergence of conceptual art in the late 1960s and early 1970s, briefly considering the nature of the idea as related to conceptual art and the shift from an art that required a visual experience to one in favour of the cerebral. I will then discuss the work in light of these considerations and finally, briefly attempt to consider it in terms of some wider conceptual propositions.

This project reflects works by artists who have taken something from other images—whether from the sphere of art or pop culture, the museum or mass media—and who have reworked what they have taken into something new. In doing so, they tell us something about the images they have made use of. But they also tell us something about the social or institutional contexts that the images have been taken from and about the conditions under which they were produced, displayed, and traded. Appropriation, then, is a form of engaging, not just with images, but with reality itself—because
for a long time now, and today more than ever, reality has been mediated by means of mass media images. Texts referring to the works of John Baldessari, Marcel Broodthaers, Harun Farocki, Andrea Fraser, Nina Könnemann, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Hilary Lloyd, Michaela Meise, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman.
Kunstmuseum Basel, 2015.

A hazy, pixelated black-and-white photograph shows spindly palm fronds, pavement, and rows of parked cars (Figure 4.1). A generic Southern California setting, bereft of particular intrigue. Bisected by what appears to be a tree trunk (though it could just as easily be a telephone pole or a lamp post), we have either a precise diptych or an awkward composition (depending on how one reads it). The image appears arbitrary yet highly measured. There is a sense of stark, midday sunlight, marked by the near absence of shadow. It is a calm picture of order, where plants and shrubbery seem as planned and organized as the immobile vehicles in the background. One searches the picture, and significance is difficult to detect: a low-resolution image, both visually and conceptually. Beneath the photograph's frame, against a blank background, hand-painted black capital letters spell out the following: an artist is not merely the slavish announcer of a series of facts, which in this case the camera has had to accept and mechanically record. An Artist Is Not Merely the Slavish Announcer of a Series of Facts, Which in This Case the Camera Has Had to Accept and Mechanically Record (1966-68) counts among John Baldessari's early works, from a series Peter Schjeldahl referred to plainly in Diack_i-xii_1-266_body.indd 169 Diack_i-xii_1-266_body.indd 169

""Abstract (E): In the 1960s-70s, many artists have developed experimental practice of Photography including text and series/sequence. At first, the process has been mainly conceptual and documentary. Gradually it has become more and more narrative as demonstrated Narrative Art. Therefore, the photographic and textual sequences appear as the development of "fruitful temporality" suitable to diegesis. Thus, Cartier-Bresson's vision - essentially focusing on the concentration of Time through the "decisive moment" - is from now on overtaken.

Abstract (F): Dans les années 1960-70, une pratique artistique largement répandue reposait sur un usage expérimental de la photographie caractérisé par la séquence et le recours au texte. D’abord purement conceptuel et documentaire, cet usage s’est tourné peu à peu vers la narrativité, à l’exemple du Narrative art. La séquence photographique et textuelle apparaît ainsi comme le lieu du développement d’une temporalité féconde à même de développer une diégèse.""

1 INDICE Premessa 03 Edward Ruscha: vita e opere 06 John Baldessari: vita e opere 11 Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass 15 Ruscha e il libro d'arte 15 Ruscha e i libri fotografici 16 Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass 19 Trying to Photograph a Ball so that is in the Center of a Picture 26 Baldessari fotografo 26 Trying to Photograph a Ball so that is in the Center of a Picture 28 Necessità e contingenza: dialettica del fallimento 32 Baldessari, la nostalgia e l'arte concettuale 33 Bibliografia 36 Apparato fotografico 41 2 Premessa Scopo della trattazione è l'analisi di due opere fotografiche concettuali: Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass, 1968, di Edward Ruscha e Trying to Photograph a Ball so that is in the Center of a Picture, 1972, di John Baldessari, due artisti californiani che hanno dato un contributo fondamentale all'arte concettuale degli anni sessanta e settanta. Il tema di entrambi i lavori è la nostalgia, etimologicamente intesa come sofferenza per un'impossibilità di ritorno, qui trattata come pena malinconica e languido struggimento verso qualcosa di assente e indefinito; essa è una costante che attraversa le fotografie comprese nelle raccolte e le rivaluta secondo questa modalità. Entrata nel lessico europeo per opera del medico Johannes Hofer 1 , la nostalgia è passata da uno stato di malattia fisica, a una sofferenza poetica dai risvolti sentimentali, da una grave patologia portatrice di morte, al dolore per l'impossibilità del ritorno in patria. Ciò che qui interessa è un tormento lieve e poco percepibile, che avvolge le opere esaminate, alla luce dello struggimento verso un ricordo presente o assente, ma tale che non può essere temporaneamente raggiunto. Essa conferisce profondità all'opera d'arte in quanto permette, per usare le parole di Walter Benjamin a proposito di Proust, di entrare nel cuore del mondo 2 . Solo un sentimento distaccato dal mondo, infatti, permette di cogliere aspetti che altrimenti risulterebbero superficiali. Nostalgia come modalità di visione e pensiero, quindi, che in Ruscha si traduce in una desolazione verso ciò che lo circonda: le stazioni di benzina, i parcheggi, le piscine californiane, i non-luoghi 3

RAPHAËL PIRENNE Every statement is specified in this way: there is no statement in general, no free, neutral, independent statement; but a statement always belongs to a series or a whole, always plays a role among other statements, deriving support from them and distinguishing itself from them: it is always part of a network of statements, in which it has a role, however minimal it may be, to play. (Foucault [1969]: 99) 8-When words such as painting and sculpture are used, they connote a whole tradition and imply a consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist who would be reluctant to make art that goes beyond the limitations.

Why do we continue to look to photographs for evidence despite our awareness of photography’s potential for duplicity? Documents of Doubt critically reassesses the truth claims surrounding photographs by looking at how conceptual artists creatively undermined them. Studying the unique relationship between photography and conceptual art practices in the United States during the social and political instability of the late 1960s, Heather Diack offers vital new perspectives on our “post-truth” world and the importance of suspending easy conclusions in contemporary art.

Considering the work of four leading conceptual artists of the 1960s and ’70s, Diack looks at photographs as documents of doubt, pushing the form beyond commonly assumed limits. Through in-depth and thorough reevaluations of early work by noted artists Mel Bochner, Bruce Nauman, Douglas Huebler, and John Baldessari, Diack advances the powerful thesis that photography provided a means of moving away from the object and toward performative effects, playing a crucial role in the development of conceptual art as a medium of doubt and contingency.

Discussing how unexpected and contradictory meanings can exist in the guise of ordinary pictures, Documents of Doubt offers evocative and original ideas on truth’s connection to photography in the United States during the late 1960s and how conceptual art from that period anticipated our current era of “alternative facts” in contemporary politics and culture.

"The Aesthetics of the [Non-]Proof" discusses the problems of documentary photography and documentation systems (among others) to refer to parts of the world (like objects and events). Referential, emotive, phatic and poetic communicative functions are related to each other in constructivistic photomontages (Alexander Rodchenko, Gustav Klucis, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, John Heartfield), photographs (Bernd & Hilla Becher, Axel Hütte, Candida Höfer, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth) and conceptual documentation systems (Douglas Huebler), among others (Martha Rosler, Giulio Paolini, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, John Baldessari, Joseph Kosuth). I discuss these problems in using linguistic and philosophical approaches by Roman Jakobson, William Van Orman Quine, Jean Baudrillard and Jacques Derrida.

Vers une théorie du postmodernisme ? Voici l'hypothèse que je voudrais avancer, ce soir, pour fixer le lieu-ou peut-être le très provisoire théâtredu travail que je fais : je suppose que dans toute société la production du discours est à la fois contrôlée, sélectionnée, organisée et redistribuée par un certain nombre de procédures qui ont pour rôle d'en conjurer les pouvoirs et les dangers, d'en maîtriser l'événement aléatoire, d'en esquiver la lourde, la redoutable matérialité.

Review of the catalogue accompanying the exhibition "more Konzeption Conception now", Museum Morsbroich Leverkusen, 1. Februar – 19. April 2015, Kat. hg. v. Stefanie Kreuzer, Dortmund: Kettler 2015.
Published in: Kunstchronik, vol. 68, issue 12, December 2015, pp. 590-593.

« It's your fault John, you called them artists. » (Lawrence Weiner) John Baldessari et « Post Studio Art » à CalArts au début des années 1970 I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art En 1971, John Baldessari réalisait une intervention singulière soulevant la question du rapport entre professeur et étudiant. L'oeuvre est connue, elle s'intitule : I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art. Alors professeur au California Institute of Arts (CalArts) depuis une année, John Baldessari avait été invité à participer à une exposition qui se déroula du 1 er au 10 avril dans la galerie d'une autre école, le Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (Halifax, Canada). Ne pouvant se rendre sur place, il fit parvenir ses instructions par écrit aux étudiants en leur proposant d'inscrire sur les murs des salles d'exposition la phrase « I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art », qui véhiculait ironiquement une dimension de punition. À sa surprise, au lieu de liquider cet exercice punitif d'une seule traite en inscrivant, par exemple, la dite phrase une seule fois sur chaque mur, les étudiants se prêtèrent au jeu, chacun couvrant de son écriture une large surface des murs de la galerie 1. Pourtant, cette oeuvre ne développe pleinement ses effets qu'à prendre en considération la reprise qu'en fit Baldessari. En Californie, Baldessari allait quitter cette position fictionnalisée du « maître punissant » pour adopter à son tour celle du « disciple puni » en réalisant une vidéo d'une trentaine de minutes où il recopiait, ligne après ligne et page après page, avec application et méthode, à l'instar des étudiants de Halifax, le même énoncé : « I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art. » Sous l'impulsion que lui donnait, entre autres, son directeur Garry Kennedy entre 1967 et 1969, le Nova Scotia College se révélait être un lieu adéquat pour l'intervention de Baldessari, accueillant comme professeurs des artistes qui lui étaient proches (Vito Acconci, Sol Lewitt, Dan Graham ou Lawrence Wiener) et soutenant une pédagogie qui prenait acte de l'émergence plus ou moins récente de nouvelles pratiques artistiques, dont l'art conceptuel 2. Pourtant, une ambigüité traverse et conditionne cette pièce. Quant à sa procédure, elle peut effet correspondre à certains « codes » de l'art conceptuel : celui de la problématisation de la matérialité de l'oeuvre par le recours au langage ; celui d'une forme de mise en crise de

In 2008, German artist Gregor Schneider raised controversy when he announced his wish to exhibit, in a museum, a person who has just died a natural death (or who is about to die a natural death). He created Sterberaum [death chamber], which had been in the making since the 1990s, and exhibited it in museums in Innsbruck, in 2011, and in Szczecin, Poland, the following year. The chamber did not hold a corpse but Gerd Gerhard Loeffler, an artist suffering from a brain tumour. In 2008, defending the humanitarian aspect of such a project and aiming to diminish the fear of death, Schneider claimed that the actual controversy was about the contemporary reality of death, not death itself. 1

This article explores what might be at stake when art and performance exposes the apparently peripheral structures of value and labour that support the art-event. For example, in the piece attributed to John Baldessari in the 11 Rooms exhibition at the 2011 Manchester International Festival (UK), the organizers attempted to stage a previously unrealized concept by Baldessari that centered around the display of a real human corpse. For various reasons, they were unable to do so and instead displayed printouts selected from a year of correspondence in which the bulk of activity was undertaken by relatively anonymous members of curatorial and technical staff. Or in Quarantine's theatre piece Entitled (2011), technicians carry out the actions they would normally undertake during the day before an audience arrives, but, now that an audience is present, they narrate their actions as they perform them. One way of understanding these gestures is as attempts to present labour as something ‘real’ that might interrupt the fakery of art: the real corpse, the real stagehands, etc. However, drawing on Alice Rayner's reading of Derrida and Marx and John Roberts' arguments about the logic of the readymade, I argue that the usefulness of the staging of labour in this way is not in the way that it presents some authentic action that overcomes theatre's artifice, but instead in the peculiar failure of theatrical actions to be fully present. Rather than the ‘reality’ of the labour interrupting the ‘representation’ of the theatre, we might regard this as theatre that shows us labour as it really is; it is just that when we see it for what it is, it isn't there.