John Baldessari

Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles
Acquired by the present owner from the above in December 2001

Los Angeles, Margo Leavin Gallery, John Baldessari: New Work, April - May 1997

Christopher Knight, "An Enlightened Twist on Tradition," Los Angeles Times, April 30, 1997

This work is in very good condition overall. There is slight evidence of wear and handling around the edges and extremely fine craquelure at the pull margins. There are two pinpoint spot accretions located 7 inches from the bottom edge and 3 inches from the right edge. Under ultra violet light inspection there is no evidence of restoration. Unframed.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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John Baldessari, the Los Angeles Conceptual artist, has always had an aesthetic cynical proclivity. It therefore came as no surprise for those versed in Baldessari lore when the artist turned to Francisco de Goya's Disasters of War print series as source inspiration. Begun in 1810 and decrying the horrors of violence, the suite of 80 prints addressed post-war society and the pursuit of truth. The present work sources its literal inspiration from Plate 66, eponymously titled Strange devotion!. In this print, Goya renders a public spectacle of folly which can be interpreted to suggest that in the same way humans debase the religious and make it ordinary, they elevate the ordinary to the realm of the religious. Through these allegories, Goya shows how, in the carnivalesque world that is his, reason is useless. Therefore the suite of prints extended beyond a critique of society to a general humanistic one, and one can surmise that this interpretation inspired Baldessari for its associative Conceptual relevance.  

In the present work, a seemingly trivial image of a single dumbbell captioned with the reverent and stoic text STRANGE DEVOTION directly and ironically parallel the word and object. Whereas Goya used language to expose the inadequacy of language, Baldessari appears less interested in logical relationships between image and text than with the ubiquitous possibilities within their conceptual interpretation.  The banality of both object and text coupled by the very distance they have both in form and function make this series a potent and compelling treatise in Baldessarian semiotics.