Artists Collected In Depth
John Baldessari
Exhibiting Paintings, 1967-1968Acrylic on canvas 67 3/4 x 56 1/2 in. (172.1 x 143.5 cm)
in depth: John Baldessari
One of the most celebrated conceptual artists of his time, John Baldessari also taught at California Institute of the Arts for several decades. After abandoning traditional painting in the late 1960s, Baldessari began to explore the ways in which visual images establish and embody meaning. This investigation is manifested in painted words carefully chosen by the artist but rendered by a sign painter. As in Exhibiting Paintings, these texts typically describe the processes of exhibiting and evaluating art, offering a visual manifestation of a theoretical discourse. Baldessari also creates sequences of photographs that question the nature of human perception, and his video and mixed media works investigate the associations between visual experience and language.