Quality Material
Quality Material, 1966–68, John Baldessari. Acrylic on canvas. 67 3/4 x 56 1/2 in. Collection of Danielle and David Ganek. © John Baldessari
On View at the Getty Center: Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950-1970
John Baldessari emerged as a major figure of West Coast conceptualism in the 1960s. That his earliest paintings displayed elements of Pop Art—often considered anathema to conceptual art—indicates an important inflection of L.A. conceptual art, which remained tied to objects and paintings, even as it simultaneously questioned their status. John Baldessari’s canvases of the late 1960s were stretched and primed by someone else, and their words were lettered by a sign painter he had hired. This removal of the artist’s hand—an important conceptual art characteristic—is even starker in the word-only paintings such as Quality Material. Part of a series of paintings featuring text from art history books and instructional guides, these works unmask the insularity of art criticism as well as the arid nature of didactic texts.
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John Baldessari at the opening of his exhibition at the Molly Barnes Gallery in Los Angeles, 1968. Photo by Phillip T. Jones and courtesy of John Baldessari. © Phillip T. Jones
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John Baldessari (left) at the opening of his exhibition at the Molly Barnes Gallery in Los Angeles, 1968. Photo by Phillip T. Jones and courtesy of John Baldessari. © Phillip T. Jones
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John Baldessari in the late 1960s. Image courtesy of John Baldessari
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John Baldessari in 1960. Image courtesy of John Baldessari
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Exhibition announcement for Broxton Sequences: Sequential Imagery in Photography, at Broxton Gallery, 1976. The Getty Research Institute, Gift of Hal Glicksman, 2009.M.5.5. Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery
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Poster for John Baldessari exhibition Pure Beauty at Molly Barnes Gallery in Los Angeles, 1968. © John Baldessari. The Getty Research Institute, 890164.87
