{"id":919,"date":"2017-05-08T06:30:41","date_gmt":"2017-05-08T06:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gsfineart.com\/gallery-news\/?p=919"},"modified":"2017-04-17T18:06:37","modified_gmt":"2017-04-17T18:06:37","slug":"wow-work-of-the-week-john-baldessari-large-door","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gsfineart.com\/gallery-news\/wow\/wow-work-of-the-week-john-baldessari-large-door","title":{"rendered":"WOW – Work Of the Week – John Baldessari “Large Door”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n\n
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John Baldessari<\/b><\/span>
\nLarge Door<\/i><\/span>
\n1986<\/span>
\nPhotogravure and aquatint on torn Rives BFK aper<\/span>
\n20 x 38 in.
\nEdition of 35<\/span>
\nPencil signed\u00a0and numbered<\/span><\/p>\n

About This\u00a0Work:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cFingerprints and footprints can be repeated, and that\u2019s why I make prints endlessly\u201d \u00a0<\/i>– John Baldessari<\/p>\n

John Baldessari has created a formidable body of editions and artist\u2019s books in his lifetime.\u00a0His irreverent and playful prints require an intellectual workout as rigorous as any other medium in which he chooses to work.<\/p>\n

A self-described \u201cfailed writer<\/em>\u201d who \u201cbuilds with images the way a writer builds with words<\/em>\u201d, Baldessari\u2019s work is concerned with the idea of visual information as signifier and a means of communication, combining stock imagery, colors, and text to create intricate and taut visual ambiguities.\u00a0His aim is to create enough \u201ctension\u201d between found images in order to illicit questions and curiosity.<\/p>\n

Using found photographs as source material –\u00a0primarily stock images from early Hollywood films, newspaper photographs, and postwar advertising –\u00a0\u00a0Baldessari was drawn to the generic nature of such images, their role in creating a shared visual culture, and the power they have to reveal subconscious thoughts and uncover the viewer\u2019s \u201cemotional baggage\u201d.<\/p>\n

In 1986, Baldessari created a series of 10 prints, to do just that. This series, entitled Hegel\u2019s Cellar,\u00a0<\/em>used stock imagery in montages to\u00a0examine Hegel\u2019s theory of an \u201cabyss (or cellar) as a psychic space where one preserve[s] images unconsciously<\/em>\u201d (Wendy Weitman in The Prints of John Baldessari: A Catalogue Raisonne <\/em>1971\u20132007, pp. 23-24).<\/p>\n

The idea was brought out while Baldessari was in\u00a0psychotherapy at the time, and he had started to let emotion (but not his own emotions) into his work. The presence of fear, anxiety, lust, horror, and other states was a new element, but their frequently jarring context was not; he was on the lookout for the unexpected associations generated by random images in close proximity.<\/p>\n

This week’s Work Of the Week (WOW) is Large Door<\/em>, from Hegel\u2019s Cellar.<\/em><\/p>\n

Faced with the dilemma or option of either being killed or stepping into the abyss, represented by a large black rectangle of equal proportion as the men on both sides carrying pistols, Baldessari is challenging the viewer to fill in the blanks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Baldessari Large Door 1986 Photogravure and aquatint on torn Rives BFK aper 20 x 38 in. Edition of 35 Pencil signed\u00a0and numbered About This\u00a0Work: \u201cFingerprints and footprints can be repeated, and that\u2019s why I make prints endlessly\u201d \u00a0– John … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":920,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[291,16,79,543,159,14,84,25,248,8,83,9,542,539,540,538,541,15,102,73,23,47,56,88,222,17,89],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsfineart.com\/gallery-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsfineart.com\/gallery-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsfineart.com\/gallery-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsfineart.com\/gallery-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsfineart.com\/gallery-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=919"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gsfineart.com\/gallery-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":925,"href":"https:\/\/gsfineart.com\/gallery-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919\/revisions\/925"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsfineart.com\/gallery-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsfineart.com\/gallery-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsfineart.com\/gallery-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsfineart.com\/gallery-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}