Midtern

                                 

John Baldessari is a famous artist that is known for his different photography in California. His office is still in California were he lives and still continues his photography as well as opening new institutions for students. When I assigned to learn about John Baldessari, I did not know who he was or his work. Looking up his work I remember seeing his dots photography around and thinking how unusual and interesting it was. It is not something that you see very often and that is something that he is trying to get across in his artwork. In the video, he says “art is communication, learning how to communicate through teaching affected my classroom teaching,” the artwork and strategies he was teaching in his classroom was the similar as to what he does as an artist. I agree with him in not just art being a form of communication but with all subjects and communicating with your students and finding their interests helps further their education in that particular subject. While looking up information about his work, I can tell that he is really dedicated into making sure that his work looks exactly how he wants it be, with the colors he imagines it to be describing it as “having the right red next to the blue, very carefully mixing the colors,” or with how the placement he wants a certain image to look. As well as having such an influence over people that once he describes something as art they believe him. Baldessari has been an artist for many years and is known for putting his own touch into the photographs and paintings that people can distinguish his work from the others as well as putting his own experiences in the books that he writes. An example is in his photography in where he puts colored dots over people’s faces. The image above is called Stonehenge (with two persons) blue, done in 2005; he designed this piece with mixografia relief print on handmade 100% cotton paper with slight deckle. He described the reason he put dots over people’s faces is because he likes to distort and make his artwork into collages and communicates that it can be anyone under that dot. The next piece is I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art, in 1971 and is done in lithograph, in which the phrase is repeated over and over and is trying to convey a message that he will not make art that is just considered art but as something more. The piece on the bottom right is What Is Painting, 1966-68, the medium being synthetic polymer paint on canvas. In this piece he describes what painting is to him, which is more then just a random picture that is placed there for no reason and that art can also be portrayed with words. The last piece of artwork is Pure Beauty, which is a book that Baldessari did that consists of more than 240 illustrations. After doing research on Baldessari, I believe that his work was successful in his ideas and I feel the way he was doing that in his artwork is unique in being honest with his viewers through his art pieces. Personally, I enjoy looking at his work and in the future when I go to a museum that displays his work I will be looking forward to seeing them in person and know who did it and his reason why.