More or Less Than Meets the Eye

 
A John Baldessari retrospective that showcases more than 40 years of work, Pure Beauty, ends today at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 
The show is a cohesive exploration of the multi-level interplay between images, graphics, type, and words, contextualized over the course of a lifetime. Or, rather, half of the 79-year-old artist’s lifetime. 
In 1970, Baldessari cremated the paintings he’d created between 1953 and 1966 (save one, Nose, which was included in the show). The Wall Street Journal’s Lance Esplund implies that this was possibly Baldessari’s finest artistic act: “Cremation was the right — if not the ethical—choice. He should have stopped there.” 
Los Angeles Times’ critic Christopher Knight offers a more enthusiastic review of Baldessari’s influence: “His best work stops us short, allowing us to see things with fresh eyes.”
Baldessari’s work is a tour de force of the seen, the unseen and the ill-advised, with images that highlight the chasm between painting and photography; with faces concealed by bright circles and silhouettes alluded to with mylar-esque masques; and with playful contradictions that explore what an artist should or should not do, whether it be to juxtapose a kiss and a palm tree or to make it appear that a palm tree is growing right out of a figure’s head.
Esplund might have you believe that Baldessari is an artist who rejected art, and he questions Baladessari’s need to make more. Knight, by comparison, seems to take Baldessari’s statesmanship for granted, a Conceptual artist with a capital “C”, and a successful navigator of the gap between the historic and the contemporary. 


Much Less Than Meets the Eye, Lance Esplund, the Wall Street Journal
Art review: ‘John Baldessari: Pure Beauty’ @ LACMA, Christopher Knight, the Los Angeles Times, Culture Monster blog
John Baldessari — “Wrong” (1967), Paul Sears Photography Blog
LACMA Exhibitions: John Baldessari

Kissing Series: Simone Palm Trees, 1975.
Tips for Artists Who Want to Sell, 1966-1968.