Meddling with Media to Make Art

May 5, 2005 8:52 AM

Guggenheim lecture on John Baldessari in his own words: "People shaking hands, you know: congratulating each other, what have you in a standard shot. I really always found them objectionable and then I realized that these were people making decisions about my life while I was in my studio so there was a kind of uneasiness on my part and one day after carrying these photographs around I had some circular price stickers and I put them on their faces. And I really felt that leveled the playing field somehow."
posted by Mme. Robot (9 comments total)

Thanks for that. There's a link to Baldessari's own site at the bottom of the page, which is nice too.
posted by TimothyMason at 10:11 AM on May 5, 2005

i like the idea of art as a "game."

link to his project too, Deutsche Guggenheim commission

It would be nice if more people just chilled and didn't take media so seriously all of the time.
posted by Mme. Robot at 10:19 AM on May 5, 2005

Baldessari allright. His work is pretty standard as far as Pop Art goes. Check out Ray Johnson's work here and here. I think he's pretty exceptional.
Also, see the doccumentary they made about his life and death, How to Draw a Bunny.
I'm not sure that you'd call him a "pop" artist, exactly, but he's an influenced contemporary of it, but Bruce Conner's also quite remarkable.
posted by Jon-o at 10:28 AM on May 5, 2005

How to Draw a Bunny is so great on so many levels. Can't put my finger on it but there's something about that movie that reminds me of Andy Kaufman.
posted by Mme. Robot at 10:37 AM on May 5, 2005

art as a game / didn't take media so seriously

He may not mean by "game" that it shouldn't be taken seriously. Duchamp, for example, treated art as a game, but he played the game of chess seriously and expertly. I agree with you, though, that some joking around can shake up the art world.

Still, with the great strides art has made, serious analysis has a place alongside playfulness. Modern artists, for example, have significantly changed culture by breaking past the boundaries of galleries and art criticism, opening art appreciation to the public.
posted by NickDouglas at 10:40 AM on May 5, 2005

Nick, i meant that he was gaming "media."

But Conceptual Art sort of used what it had around at the time which i think was the summation of the talk.

i just think it's funny that you can make the same point from a media standpoint from the mid 60s as you can today.
posted by Mme. Robot at 12:58 PM on May 5, 2005

Why do these art threads die so young? I'm thinking of bringing more attention to art on metafilter. A nice big fpp every week or so. would anyone be interested in that?
posted by Jon-o at 9:41 PM on May 5, 2005

Because what do you say about plastic arts that isn't either "Hey, I (don't) like that" or vaguely pretentious? Best just to link to something in the same field.
posted by TimothyMason at 11:07 PM on May 5, 2005

Mefi used to have more art stuff on it back in the day. Seems very political now. There's some other good art stuff on that site too.
posted by Mme. Robot at 12:47 PM on May 6, 2005