John Baldessari: Somewhere Between Almost Right and Not Quite (With Orange)

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Guggenheim Museum (January 2, 2005)

Language ‏ : ‎ English

Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 112 pages

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0892073179

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0892073177

Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.98 x 0.51 x 10.98 inches

The American artist John Baldessari gained prominence in the late 1960s by merging Pop art's utilization of mass media imagery with Conceptual art's use of language, resulting in a distinctive body of work that has become a hallmark of postmodern art. Early in his career, Baldessari started incorporating images and text from the advertising and movie industries into his photo-based art. He appropriated pictures and movie stills, juxtaposing, editing, and cropping them alongside written texts. The resulting montage of photography and language often challenges the narrative associations implied by the isolated scenes, providing a greater plurality of meanings. The layered and often humorous compositions carry various connotations, emphasizing the relative nature of meaning. Throughout his extensive and celebrated career, Baldessari has consistently played with and critiqued popular culture, gradually increasing the scale and visual impact of his work. This publication examines the new works that Baldessari created on commission for the Deutsche Guggenheim.