The late John Baldessari is perhaps best remembered for his dry humor, which flouted the self-seriousness of conceptual art. Throughout his career, Baldessari worked inside the studio and classroom to scrub the stigma of austerity from conceptual art. He believed conceptual art to be a dialogue between experiences prompted by provocative art and ideas, not a dictated narrative from artists with an aloof perception of the world; He encouraged his viewers, regardless of formal training or education, to bring their interpretations, criticisms, and ultimately, their understanding of the world, to conceptual art.
Although Baldessari's oeuvre is wide-ranging, Falling Star captures the artist's most recognizable stylistic elements: Found photograph collages and colorful adhesive dots. In this color aquatint and photogravure print split into horizontal thirds, two figures partially buried in bricks lie stacked on top of one another beneath a cartoonish rendition of a shooting star. Colored dots obscure the faces of the figures in Baldessari's classic style, encouraging viewers to look beyond the work's superficial context and engage with the conceptual totality of the composition.
Heavily inspired by language and its necessary yet ultimately arbitrary grammatical rules, Baldessari's works explore the fecund potential of narratives decoupled from their origin stories. In Falling Star, Baldessari uses found photographic elements to create an ominous mood. Why are these figures buried in bricks? What is their relationship with one another? What is the significance of the shooting star above them? These questions, borne from anxiety induced by the viewer’s lack of information, are immediately undercut by Baldessari's hierarchal inclusion of the three primary colors, yellow, red, and his personal favorite, blue. In keeping with the conceptual tradition, Falling Star's vigor stems not from its aesthetic quality or technical execution, but from the questions it inspires viewers to ask, particularly those concerning color and narrative relationships.
John Baldessari has received multiple lifetime achievement awards for his work and contributions to the conceptual art movement. In 2014, President Barack Obama awarded Baldessari the National Medal of Arts. Numerous national and international museums have displayed Baldessari's works, including the MET, MACBA, and the Whitney. His works live in many private and public collections worldwide.
John Baldessari, Falling Star (Detail)
John Baldessari, Falling Star (Detail)
John Baldessari, Falling Star (Signature detail with framing)
John Baldessari, Falling Star (Edition detail with framing)
