Influential Concept Artist John Baldessari Dies At 88.
Baldessari, who died at 88 years old on Saturday, became one of the most influential contemporary artists of the past half-century for an oeuvre filled with works like What Is Painting. One of the leading artists part of a movement known as Conceptualism, he pioneered a style that placed an emphasis on ideas over images, crafting works that scrambled traditional notions about what was considered high art and questioning stereotypes about authorship. Working with photographs, text, and appropriated materials, he spent decades upending and rethinking what art could and should do.
The Californian artist’s work was one of dry puns, arty jokes about art, and jabs at high-minded lines of thinking that have pervaded art history for centuries. But Baldessari never thought about humor as being his primary mode of expression. “I don’t try to be funny,” he told the artist David Salle, a longtime friend and former student of his, in a 2013 conversation published by Interview. “It’s just that I feel the world is a little bit absurd and off-kilter and I’m sort of reporting.”
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Some works of John Baldessari
