Two years since his death, John Baldessari’s influence and significance are more palpable than ever.
Artnet Auctions’s “40 Under 10” sale, live through February 16, celebrates the conceptual artist’s legacy by including a sampling of works from the last 30 years of his career, including one print never before presented at auction.
For more than 50 years, Baldessari’s practice shaped the trajectory of contemporary art. In his 17 years on the faculty of the prestigious California Institute of the Arts in Santa Clarita, the artist greatly influenced the artistic landscape of the region and inspired hundreds of students.
Baldessari’s own work has traversed multiple media and forms, blending Pop art’s employment of everyday subject matter with conceptual art’s reverence for the theoretical and abstract. His works exhibit the tension between figuration, abstraction, violence, and humor.
John Baldessari, Two Bowlers (With Questioning Person) (1994). Available now in “40 Under 10” on Artnet Auctions. Est. $10,000—15,000.
In his 1970 Cremation Project, Baldessari famously burned 13 years worth of unsold paintings as he departed from his traditional practice to enter the world of printmaking. This defiant act led the artist on an almost 50-year career centered on appropriative practices. Baldessari pioneered the use and manipulation of found imagery, a method exemplified in his Two Bowlers (with Questioning Person) (1994), making a habit of repurposing commercial illustrations, recontextualizing the images to create new scenes that challenge traditional analysis and interpretation, and often obscuring faces and bodies with blocks of color.
Later works such as Engravings with Sounds: Sniffle (2015) and Yogurt (from Emoji series) (2018) exhibit Baldessari’s signature combination of text and imagery to create a visual essay of sorts, asking the viewer to find new meaning in the familiar and providing insight into the artist’s investigative process.
John Baldessari, Two Assemblages (with R, O, Y, G, V, Transparent) (2003). Available now in “40 Under 10” on Artnet Auctions. Est. $3,000—5,000.
Two Assemblages (with R, O, Y, G, V, Transparent) (2003) makes its auction debut in “40 Under 10.” The work reflects Baldessari’s longstanding interest in issues of totality and the relationship of parts to the whole. In the artist’s own words, his works demonstrate the “idea of editing and censoring, what we leave in and what we leave out. Even to the point of nothingness.”
John Baldessari, Yogurt (from Emoji series), 2018. Available now in “40 Under 10” on Artnet Auctions. Est. $4,000—7,000.
Thanks to his pioneering spirit and ability to imbue the everyday with new meaning, Baldessari has cemented his place as one of the most remarkable American conceptual artists of our time. “40 Under 10″ presents the rare opportunity to collect a work by the late conceptualist.
Bidding on Two Bowlers (with Questioning Person) (1994), Engravings with Sounds: Sniffle (2015), Yogurt (from Emoji series) (2018), and Two Assemblages (with R, O, Y, G, V, Transparent) (2003) is live through February 16.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out directly to Conner Williams, Head of Prints & Multiples, with any questions.
Head of Prints & Multiples
+1 (212) 497-9700 ext. 705