John Baldessari was born in National City, resides in Santa Monica, CA and has a prolific body of work including drawings, paintings, photography, film, video and text. Baldessari's two crusades of his early art were to encourage art galleries to exhibit photographic works, and secondly, to have text in art. The artist explains that his text painting was "information not art," and was in response to complaints by the art audience and public that abstraction impressionism in modern art was a "private language." So he decided to make painting more understandable through the use of text and photographs. When questioned, "...on what basis do you select photographic material?" His response was, "...you just have this intuitive sense over the years of making choices. And, art-making essentially is that, you choose this thing over that thing, ...you begin to develop a kind of instinct, that I want that and not this."
You'll tour his hometown as the artist has an emotional revisit to his birthplace. This Not That: The Artist John Baldessari glides through the phases of art in Baldessari's life from text paintings to film interpretations, to enormous fragments of movie stills and panoramic images dashed with color and his signature dotted faces that all balance together to narrate his story. Baldessari takes the works of what he calls "Sunday Painters" and exhibits them in his own version with a new life. He visits the Biennale in Venice as well as the Basel Art Fair. You'll see the set-up of his Guggenheim showing in Berlin, hear comments of the guests and collectors, and share the reactions of Baldessari himself. The film covers interviews of artists, critics, poets and colleagues who all admire the works, intellect and sense of humor of the great teacher and innovator, John Baldessari. As he says himself, we artists are just links in a chain contributing art for someone else to enjoy. Baldessari's favorite painting and a benchmark work is "Geranium," the film version of which closes out the documentary.
This Not That: The Artist John Baldessari's bonus features include a film entitled "You Call That Art? Allan Kaprow Visits John Baldessari (1973)" where conceptual revoluntionary artist Baldessari discusses various aspects of his work. The artist shares his comments on his film where he attempts to teach a plant how to learn the alphabet, discusses the caressing and fondling of a hat, and he sings a tribute to fellow artist, Sol Levitt. "Additional Interviews" covers a multitude of interviews with friends and collegues addressing Baldessari's works, personality and contribution to the art world, including Dave Hickey, Mike Kelley, Thomas McEvilley, Ed Ruscha, Coosje van Bruggen, Lawrence Weiner and Ealan Wingate. The packaging is comprised of stills of three of his text paintings and a photo his home in National City, and the titles of John's "Information Paintings Never Completed."
I personally found This Not That: The Artist John Baldessari enjoyable and informative. It introduced me to a style of art I had not known and an artist who sliced through the art world with his imaginative creativity (or conceptually, lack thereof) and minimally profound interpretation of everyday life and ordinary things. Anyone who is interested in art would enjoy this documentary.
