JOHN BALDESSARI

Today I went to the Baldessari exhibition at the Tate and was very impressed by his work, taking simplistic (which does not have to mean basic) idea's and turning them into a visual interpretation which could be understood and interpreted in our own specific ways. I feel he questioned visual language and pushed his own ideals into his work. 

Favorite quotes:

"A friend of mine who taught painting had all his students stand on one foot only while painting. If the student was physically off balance a new sense of order would emerge in their work."

"Our obsession with capturing a likeness"

Baldessari used to go around "trying to look between things instead of at things."

It was refreshing and inspirational to see his work as he seemed to have an intimate understanding of projecting his idea's and thought process, presenting what we do not see every day and creating an order through it. Such as "Four portraits of swords aligned." - reconstructing images.

One way to sum up his work could be "THE POWER OF SUGGESTION" which is what I like most about his work. With the image above the Baldessari quotes; "How do we render images to be powerless?"

Therefore he covers the faces or any particular part of the image that supplies information with a very simple color or circle, and therefore we are left to take in or explore the rest of the image. 

However this is only one area of his work which supplies a concept and solution. 

Found this quote in a short video on you tube:

John Baldessari:

“I am very interested in way people look at things, or don’t look at things. We automatically look at somebody face first, if you take that away then they have to look someplace else. Delete one thing after another until there’s only white left and you’ll still be looking at the white. You just want to look at something. You can sort of condition how people look”