| Equally cool and visceral, John Baldessari’s impressive, handsome, understated selection from two interrelated series marks his territory in two formal investigations some conceptual photographers began in the 80’s. In the “Windows” series, Baldessari works through the relationship between painting and photography, as Duane Michals did in shows at Sidney Janis. In “Columns,” he composes multi-paneled wall works of separately framed black and white images grouped or stacked to create a whole, not necessarily configured as a rectangle, but shaped irregularly or stacked totemically (Robert Adams at Castelli, myself at Lamagna and LeCappellaine). Within both territories, Baldessari stakes his ground in several ways. |  |
Barbara Rosenthal
Equally cool and visceral, John Baldessari’s impressive, handsome, understated selection from two interrelated series marks his territory in two formal investigations some conceptual photographers began in the 80’s. In the “Windows” series, Baldessari works through the relationship between painting and photography, as Duane Michals did in shows at Sidney Janis. In “Columns,” he composes multi-paneled wall works of separately framed black and white images grouped or stacked to create a whole, not necessarily configured as a rectangle, but shaped irregularly or stacked totemically (Robert Adams at Castelli, myself at Lamagna and LeCappellaine). Within both territories, Baldessari stakes his ground in several ways.
As for painting, whereas Michals painted directly on the surface of his intimate photographs, and desired much evidence of nuance in both color and brushstroke, Baldessari’s brightly colored, monochromatic painted sections of his much larger “Windows,” appear jig-sawed from the plane of the photograph, and lie in shallow, stark relief 1/2” above or below the surface. They are more industrialized.
Regarding his multi-paneled “Columns,” each image bears a close iconographic relationship to the other framed segments within each piece ( one column of boats, one of shadows, one brief cases, one eyes, et al), unlike Adams or me, whose each framed panel within a piece contained a distinct image. And the origin of the image is different: Adams and I photographed from reality and/or appropriated those images which resonated internally, whereas Baldessari appropriates from mass culture, film stills of the 1950’s in particular, a black and white source being tapped now by current conceptual photographers such as Allan McCollum, as well. McCollum crops and blows up artworks on the walls behind the actors to produce abstractions; Baldessari crops to isolate a tense moment (“Windows”) or an enigmatic slice (“Columns”).
The element of personality comes through Baldessari’s work, nonetheless, as clean and strong as they are, and each piece makes a striking statement on the wall.
