John Baldessari

Photo by Fredrik Nilson, courtesy 1301PE

John Baldessari, "Untitled (Maquette)" (1989)

Photo courtesy Joseph H. Hirshhorn

Thomas Eakins, "Study for the Crucifixion" (1880) from "Ways of Seeing"

John Baldessari: Noses & Ears, Etc. Part 2

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Baldessari first came to public attention as part of the early wave of Conceptual artists who crashed onto the scene in the late 1960s. Since then, he has remained a somewhat larger-than-life character in the international art world, maintaining a daunting record of exhibiting—but also keeping up an active teaching career and busying himself with publishing, speaking and curating projects.

The prolific artist currently has exhibitions in Los Angeles; Lisbon, Portugal; and Lyon, France. His next New York show opens at the Marian Goodman Gallery in October.

As if his own work weren’t keeping him busy enough, a show that Baldessari has curated from the permanent collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, titled “Ways of Seeing: John Baldessari Explores the Collection,” opened at the Washington, D.C. institution on July 26 and runs for exactly one year.

John, tell me about this show that you’ve curated for the Hirshhorn.

It’s the inauguration of a series where the museum will ask artists, architects, writers and musicians to make shows with some of the collection. I’m the guinea pig, I guess.

And have you enjoyed the experience?

Well, this is a secret that curators have been keeping from me. It has been fun. It’s like doing art. I didn’t know that this was the pay off.

What were the principles behind your selection?

Well, I just went at it, selecting work that I liked in the collection. That was the overriding principle: I figured I had to like the art. I wanted to unearth artists who had possibly fallen between the cracks. I wanted to mix older and newer artists and not just have it be very contemporary. Then I began to eliminate things by artists who were overexposed; or a lot of times I wanted an artist who I really liked, but I felt that what the museum owned wasn’t the best.

Were there works you were especially keen to include that you weren't able to?

There was one thing that I wanted to do that I could not accomplish: I know in the 1960s in SoHo, [Joseph H.] Hirshhorn was going around and buying whole painters’ studios. I knew those painters, and a lot of them have fallen off the map, and I wanted to get back and look at the work of those artists again and see how they held up. But a lot of that stuff is in storage and not documented and not photographed, so I was unable to get to it.

Well, your final selection is fascinating. Some of the artists you’ve chosen seem very much in keeping with your own artistic position, such as Giorgio Morandi ...

Yes, Morandi has always been a favorite artist.

… But then there are artists very different from you, such as Claes Oldenburg.

Of the living artists in this show, I know most of them, and Claes is a very close friend. But then there are close friends of mine who I don’t have in the show, so that’s not a reason. I just liked those pieces that he did in “The Store” environment in the early ’60s, and it’s a good example of that period in his work. You could make the argument that that was the most interesting period in his work. He was certainly at a point where he was very much influenced by the art brut of Dubuffet, and I have the Oldenburg right next to a Dubuffet in the Hirshhorn. So you shouldn’t just think of the works individually; you should think of the milieu I’ve put them in too.

Are there particular echoes of your own work in any of the pieces that you’ve chosen?

Certainly things emerge. There’s a Thomas Eakins Study for a Crucifixion (1888) where Christ’s head is all black, and there’s an unfinished Eakins where the head is pretty obscure, and a Guy Pene Du Bois where the heads are obscured. As you know, that’s something that I do to destabilize the viewing of a figure. That reflects my work, certainly.

I’ve always had a fondness for Surrealism, so there’s a Surrealist section. Abstract Expressionism, that’s the art I learned in art school pretty much, so I’ve always been close to that. And I’ve been immersed in European art since the late ’60s. I knew Sigmar Polke, and I knew Martin Kippenberger, so that’s part of my history also.

You’ve talked in the past about the importance of choices in your own works, suggesting they result from “what we leave in and what we leave out.” Do you see a parallel between the selection process involved in making art and the choices you make in curating?

Yes, very much. I think art is essentially about making choices. Where you’re making the choices could be anywhere, but it’s certainly one thing or the other. If it’s beyond utilitarian, it’s aesthetic. In the same way, I can’t escape my history of supporting myself as a teacher, and so there are some didactic things in the show. I’ve tried not to be too heavy-handed, but it’s certainly there.

I see that the pieces of yours that the Hirshhorn have hung in a small accompanying exhibition are very early pieces. Do you think there’s something in the air that is making Conceptual art seem particularly relevant again?

I do see this. And I encounter it in my teaching as well. There is a strong interest in art from the 1970s for whatever reason. I really couldn’t tell you why.

I wonder if it’s something to do with impatience with the status quo. Certainly your early work seemed to have a real impatience about it.

I think that’s correct, yes. I once said that if I saw the art around me that I liked, then I wouldn’t do art.

So, to bring things up to date, John, you have a show opening at Marian Goodman in the fall, what can we look forward to there?

[Laughs out loud.] I wish I could tell you! I’m right in the midst of it, so all I can say is that it’s a continuation of a new series of work that I embarked upon a few months ago for a show at the Cristina Guerra Gallery in Lisbon. It’s called “Noses and Ears, Etc.” All you have to do is read Gogol’s short story “The Nose,” and you’ll get the idea.