Tetrad Series: All Getting On Together, 1999

 

Meg Cranston: Would you be comfortable with the label formalist?

John Baldessari: Somebody called me that once and I think it was supposed to be derogatory, though I kind of liked it because I do think about that a lot. Before Photoshop, I would go in with oil paints and alter darks and lights only thinking how it looked formally. But somehow when it’s in a photograph people don’t think about it as much as when it’s in a painting.

MC: So you’re comfortable with the label? You know it’s very fashionable.

JB: Really? To be called a formalist?

MC: Didn’t you know?

JB: No, I thought it was being used as an insult.

MC: In terms of the way you structure your work, you’ve generally resisted the use of a single image.

JB: I can’t seem to do it. I did do it when I was a painter because you have a single canvas. I suppose I did a couple diptychs or triptychs in painting and that was about it. What got me away from the single image was movies. I began seeing paintings in a row in a museum as being like frames in a movie. So I got to fantasizing… what was the frame before this van Gogh painting and what was the frame after? If you had a wide angle shot of the painting what would it look like? I started thinking about painting in cinegraphic terms. I had a feeling that one image was too emblematic of the truth. One image meaning, it is this way.

MC: The single image is iconic?

JB: Yeah. The frame before it is rejected the frame after is rejected and this frame is the one that is chosen. I am always curious why things are rejected and why one thing is chosen.

(…)

MC: In the Tetrad Series, all the works are divided into four images. How was that decided?

JB: It was very simply four ways of understanding what’s around me: through literature, through art, through objects in the world, through film. Which are four of many, but certainly four that affect me.

(…)

MC: Can you describe one of the works specifically?

JB: This one, All Getting On Together, seems like an easy read compared to some of the other ones. This one is about difference because they’re all in the same place they’re getting along together.
I guess I am doing it by degrees. Here, (pointing to a movie still of Siamese twins) they would have to get along together and here, (a Goya etching showing a flatulent person turning their backside to the faces of three other figures) I am being rather ironic. They are forced together, they’re all downwind from a gigantic fart. This, (a photograph of a tea cup and wood block), is the most far-fetched. Who knows if they can get on together, but they are sharing the same space.

(….)

JB: I have always tried to make a hybrid form between painting and photography and this is probably as close as I’ve come.
 

(passages uit Many Worthwhile Aspects, published in Baldessari: While something is happening here, something else is happening there / Works 1988-1999, [removed], [removed], [removed])
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In dit interview met collega-kunstenares, schrijfster en professor Meg Cranston voor de publicatie Baldessari: While something is happening here, something else is happening there / Works 1988-1999, verkent John Baldessari zijn opvattingen over fotografie en schilderkunst mede door dieper in te gaan op het werk Tetrad Series: All Getting On Together (1999).

John Baldessari, die begin dit jaar overleden is, staat bekend om het creëren van ironische, complexe en gelaagde kunst. Zijn humoristische en speelse houding ten opzichte van het conceptualisme vertaalde zich in een aanzienlijke waaier aan fotomontages, prints, films, video’s en kunstenaarsboeken die hij over een periode van meer dan vijf decennia creëerde. Baldessari’s oeuvre provoceert en herdenkt onze noties over kunst op een onomwonden manier. Die aanpak resoneert met de ambities van Anton en Annick Herbert voor de Collectie en Baldessari wordt zo een van de kunstenaars met wie ze een langdurige band opbouwen. Het bovenstaand werk Tetrad Series: All Getting On Together, vervaardigd met acrylverf en inkjet op doek, maakt deel uit van de tentoonstelling Distance Extended / 1979 – 1997. Part I en manifesteert Baldessari’s fascinatie voor het verweven van fotografie, schilderkunst en tekst.

Links: Tetrad Series: The Important An Unimportant, 1999 (Seattle Art Museum)
Rechts: Tetrad Series: Necessary Facts, 1999 (privé collectie)

 

Bovenstaande beelden van andere werken binnen de reeks werden gepubliceerd in de catalogus Tetrad Series, uitgegeven door Marian Goodman Gallery in New York in 1999. Het boek biedt een diepgaand inzicht in de reeks aan de hand van een uitgebreid essay door Thomas McEvilly.

Tetrad Series, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, 1999 (cover, Archief Herbert Foundation)

 
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Op zondag 20 september 2020 is de huidige tentoonstelling Distance Extended / 1979 – 1997. Part I. opnieuw open voor het publiek. Voortaan zal Herbert Foundation bepaalde aspecten van de tentoonstelling belichten aan de hand van interviews met de kunstenaars die deel uitmaken van de presentatie.