John Baldessari

Sonnabend Gallery, New York
Marian Goodman Gallery, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above

This work appears in very good overall condition. There are no apparent condition problems with the work. Framed under Plexiglas.
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Assembled from photos, film stills, books and other ephemera that the artist has collected over the years, John Baldessari's photocollages emerge as visual non-sequiturs. Cryptic and abstruse, the juxtaposition of these disparate components defies ready interpretation, leaving the viewer to ruminate over its evasive meaning. For Baldessari, the solution to these visual puzzles is never absolute, but derives from the manifold experiences and associations that each viewer uniquely brings to the work. As the artist explains, "everybody knows a different world, and only part of it. We communicate only by chance, as nobody knows the whole, only where overlapping takes place." (Baldessari cited in C. van Bruggen, Exh. Cat. Los Angeles, The Museum of Contemporary Art, John Baldessari, 1990, p. 11)

 

Dressed in track suits, the two figures in the top image are situated on a suburban soccer field, a setting typical of the ordinary, deadpan scenes that Baldessari favors. As in many of his photocollages, the figures' faces have been occluded by white disks, denying the viewer access to what is the most defining information in the photograph. Inspired by the plaster fillings used to conjoin the fragmented shards of antique Greek vases at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Baldessari began to incorporate these white patches into his work. This ellipsis of information adds yet another dimension of arcane mystery to the photocollages as the white areas, like the plaster fillings, correspond to what is unknown. In the bottom image, the figures, which appear only as amorphously-shaped silhouettes, recline in what appears to be the control room of a space shuttle. The collision of these two seemingly unrelated images triggers latent associations and subconscious memories that prove revelatory. Still, as Baldessari explains, "looking for the truth implies that there is a truth. If we weren't looking for a truth maybe we wouldn't get so frustrated. But I guess we can never get rid of the idea that there must be a secret of some sort. And so I want that to be built in too." (van Bruggen, p.42)