John BALDESSARI THROUGH VIDEO, ON CANVAS, IN COLLAGE, AND, YES, WITH HIS SIGNATURE PAINTED DOTS ON FACES, ARTIST JOHN BALDESSARI HAS PUNCHED HOLES THROUGH MODERNISM, TURNED CONCEPTUALISM ON ITS HEAD, AND CREATED A BODY OF WORK THAT IS PART COMEDIC, PART TRAGIC, UTTERLY SEMIOTIC, AND ABSOLUTELY ALL HIS OWN. By DAVID SALLE Photography MARIO SORRENTI JOHN BALDESSARI IN NEW YORK, JULY 2013. ALL CLOTHING: BALDESSARI’S OWN. 160 161 For a very long time, John Baldessari had the distinction I think I even used you as a license for my own foundation of humor also play a role in your work. of being the tallest serious artist in the world (he is tendency toward obscurity when I was younger. Now It’s obviously a very sophisticated kind of humor. And 6'7"). To paraphrase the writer A.J. Liebling, he was I find I just want to be as clear as possible. not to in any way denigrate Wegman, but Bill goes taller than anyone more serious, and more serious BALDESSARI: I go back and forth between wanting more for the punch line. Of course, there other artists than anyone taller. As was inevitable, Baldessari’s to be abundantly simple and maddeningly complex. whose sensibility is fundamentally humorous, but few hegemony in the height department has now been I always compare what I do to the work of a mystery who actually make you laugh. challenged by a handful of younger artists. What, is writer—like, you don’t want to know the end of the BALDESSARI: It’s also a little bit in the eyes of the there to be no progress? Paul Pfeiffer, Richard Phil- book right away. What a good writer does is give you beholder, I suppose. In one of my favorite New Yorker lips, and certainly Mark Bradford have approached false clues. You go here, no, that’s not right; you go cartoons by Charles Addams, you see all the faces in and possibly even surpassed Baldessari’s measure. here, no, that’s not right, and then … I much prefer a movie theater and all of them have this aghast look But if it is true that these artists can see farther that kind of game. But then you get tired of yourself on their faces, and there’s this one face that’s laughing. than their fellows, it is because they have stood on and you just want to be forthright. SALLE: It reminds me of the first time I saw Salò the shoulders of giants such as Baldessari (which, in SALLE: As André Gide said, “Don’t understand me [1976], Pasolini’s last film, in the theater. It’s an abso- Bradford’s case, would make him nearly 13 feet tall). too quickly.” lutely horrifying film, but there was one guy in the John has been a friend for more than 40 years. He BALDESSARI: Yes, I remember that. audience who was laughing his head off. [laughs] Any- was my mentor when I was a student at CalArts in the SALLE: And as Marilyn Monroe once told a journal- way, here’s a rather absurd question: How do you early ’70s, and it’s fair to say that meeting him redirected ist, “Don’t make me into a joke.” think your work might have been different if you my trajectory as an artist—as it did for innumer- BALDESSARI: I always remember this great response hadn’t breathed and grown up with art history? able others. His legendary class in Post-Studio Art of an English professor. The freshman asked, how I know that for me, art history is like a feather bed— bestowed on those of us with enough brains to notice, long should the term paper be? And he said, “Like a you fall into it and it catches you. But I’m wondering a feeling of unbelievable luck of being in exactly the lady’s skirt, long enough to cover the subject, short what your work would be like if we didn’t have this right place at the right time for the new freedoms in enough to be interesting.” [laughs] image bank of thousands of years of art. art—we arrived in time for the birthing, so to speak. SALLE: Speaking of writing, if you were to compare BALDESSARI: Would I even do art? I don’t know. From a somewhat less than auspicious beginning, yourself to a literary form, would you be a narrative I guess we get our idea about art from art history. I art history has turned out to be on John’s side. He ini- remember my first art classes in junior high school and tiated the use of pictures—photographs mainly, often high school, and so on. Where do you get the idea of a to be bad movies, and there are more bad movies than dominated, okay. And then a paradigm shift comes with words in counterpoint—which has influenced still life? Who had the first idea of a still life? good. [laughs] ‘‘I ALWAYS COMPARE with Jasper Johns and the image of a painter is differ- generations. A life in art is full of contradictions: an SALLE: I had a funny idea for a film. How come we SALLE: But say you had an idea for a crowd scene— WHAT I DO TO THE ent. Maybe it’s a guy in a tux holding a martini. And art borne out of a desire to sidestep personal taste never see student work in caveman art? All caveman a cast of thousands. Would you produce that kind of WORK OF A MYSTERY there’s a whole shift toward feminism. Most of my has become a universally recognized style—one that art is perfect. Where are the rejects? image instead of just finding a movie still of it? WRITER—YOU DON’T friends are women—that might say something. I think signifies a high level of taste. Collectors who, a few BALDESSARI: And why are there no still lives in cave BALDESSARI: No. I believe in the simplest way I can WANT TO KNOW women are more interesting to talk to. decades ago, might have considered “conceptual” art paintings? get to something, absolutely. I believe in simplicity. THE END OF THE SALLE: Do you think Duchamp was a feminist? something they probably didn’t have time for are now SALLE: Where was the Paleolithic art school? “No, that SALLE: In the ’60s and early ’70s, when you, along BALDESSARI: I think so. Absolutely. lining up for a chance to own a Baldessari. Despite— rock clearly doesn’t have the aesthetic qualities we’re with a few other people, were inventing conceptual BOOK RIGHT AWAY.’’ SALLE: I think so, too—as much as a Frenchman or perhaps because of—John’s contrarian nature, he looking for in a rock.” Also, how did they arrive at art, what did you think you were doing? What did you could be. He clearly preferred the company of women. is firmly in the canon. His art is about many things— the perfect rendering of the bison? Where did they think it’s future would be? Alex Katz once said that talent is the least of the things it’s intellectual and emotional, witty, acerbic even, at practice? They couldn’t have been great the first time out. BALDESSARI: I think the term conceptual art came later. that matter in terms of a career. Do you agree? times also melancholic, poignant, and self-revealing. BALDESSARI: Where are the clumsy bison paintings? It’s a useful term for writers, a basket to put people in, of art. I said, “Well, the way art is understood right BALDESSARI: I agree with Alex. Talent is cheap. John has often used the form of the fable in his work, [laughs] like Pop Art or Impressionism or whatever. No, back now, it’s painting or sculpture. If we talk about paint- SALLE: Ideas are a dime a dozen, form is hard. and his life has that same quality: a young man from SALLE: I remember this girl once—she had these very then, I had abandoned painting because I thought ing, what constitutes a painting? Paint on canvas— BALDESSARI: I think a lot of being good has to do Nowheresville, with no obvious prospects, bends the romantic ideas about art. She asked me, “Where do there was something else out there. It wasn’t a notion that’s all it has to be. Those are the signals, and from with artists teaching each other. Like what we were course of art to his vision. Along the way, he made you think your art comes from?” And I said, “Other unique to me. A lot of artists in the world were feeling that you can do anything.” I don’t think I would have doing at CalArts. levity and gravitas trade places. art.” She got totally turned off. the kind of malaise that Abstract Expressionism was ever done it if I had people looking over my shoulder, SALLE: When you started teaching at CalArts in This past June, I met up with John, now age 82, BALDESSARI: Don’t use that line again. running out of steam. I thought there was something saying, “Oh no, you can’t do that. That’s not a painting.” 1970, did it feel like people were starting a new kind of in New York just before the opening at the Marian SALLE: I’ll make note of that. In the recent lawsuit else. I was always interested in language. I thought, But nobody cared in National City.