JOHN BALDESSARI
Serendipity took me to see John Baldessari at the weekend at Tate Modern. It began on Friday afternoon when I was 20 minutes early to collect my children from the child minder, due to the traffic being lighter than usual. I decided to do some reading in the car whist I waited, unfortunately (I felt at the time, but fortunately in hindsight) I left my lights on. I had some trouble getting a jump start as my leads didn’t seem to be working, anyway an hour later, third time lucky, with a new set of leads I made it home. Saturday morning rushing to my sons ice skating lesson again the car wouldn’t start, we managed to get a bus and made the lesson thankfully. During the lesson I hatched a plan to drive to town the following day to see a gallery to give the car a good charge after another jump. Looking through time out I couldn’t really see anything I fancied, I usually look for a free show being a bit skint. However finally ‘LAST CHANCE John Baldessari’ did enter my radar ‘This chronological survey highlights Baldessari’s influence not only on the general development of conceptual art but also on later generations of artists. It’s the work from the 70’s and 80’s that best demonstrates his investigative games and processes; ten photos of the artist blowing cigar smoke to try to imitate images of clouds………..or shots of balls thrown in the air, displayed so that the balls are in horizontal alignment. All are deceptively simple but revealing about how we view, order and understand the world’. “This is the one” I said to my partner, it was a paying show but I thought needs must, and I’m so glad I did, it was worth the hour in the cold trying to jump start my car, the cold run to the bus for the ice skating lession and of course the price.
I had John (my nearly six year old son) with me in the show, and did he ask a lot of questions….. it was actually quite useful though, having him there, as I had to concentrate and read all the blurb so I could explain things properly. I loved the show, I know a fair amount about conceptual art but to my shame didn’t really know much of John Baldessari’s work, at one point a man that looked just like him walked very quickly through the show, having a quick look here and there, the more I looked at him the quicker he walked, I wonder if it was him.
I’ve spent the last ten years making work inspired by the sort of premise of his early work, so to see the show was very grounding for me as during the first term of my MA at Wimbledon I’ve been experimenting and working in a different way and might well have lost myself. The intro from time out about his work ‘All are deceptively simple but revealing about how we view, order and understand the world’ could be something that I use to describe my work (i’ll pilfer it). I find it very hard to write or talk about my work, I keep changing my mind as things move on. My statement is usually a conjoining of other peoples quotes and statements that seem to ring true for me too. I wonder what on earth I will write for my dissertation – any suggestions?
