{"title":"John Baldessari","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"the-life-and-opinions-of-tristram-shandy-gentleman","title":"The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFew conceptual artists possess the wit and playful edge to respond with such irony to Laurence Sterne's celebrated novel, whose episodic structure and playful reflexivity remain among the most distinctive achievements of eighteenth-century literature. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e was originally published between 1759 and 1767 in nine volumes. In 1988, John Baldessari was invited by Andrew Hoyem of the Arion Press, San Francisco, to contribute to a new deluxe edition of Sterne's masterpiece. Baldessari responded with a contemporary visual intervention: a sequence of deliberately disjointed photocollages that mirrors Sterne's playful disregard for linear narrative, conventional punctuation, and literary decorum.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe three-volume set comprises a facsimile of Sterne's original text sophisticatedly bound; a smaller tome consisting of a critical essay by the Sterne scholar Melvyn New; and an accordion-fold artist's book of Baldessari's photocollages, interspersed with Shandean aphorisms. Among the most memorable are his iconic dot portraits, placed in dialogue with a celebrated passage from Book III, Chapter XII (p. 173):\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"—And did you step in, to take a look at the grand picture, in your way back?——'Tis a melancholy daub! my Lord; not one principle of the pyramid in any one group!——and what a price!——for there is nothing of the colouring of Titian,——the expression of Rubens,—the grace of Raphael,——the purity of Dominichino,—the corregiescity of Corregio,—the learning of Poussin,—the airs of Guido,—the taste of the Carrachi's,—or the grand contour of Angelo.——Grant me patience, just heaven!——Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world,——though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst,—the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eA witty visual rediscovery of Laurence Sterne's caustic satire, Baldessari's contribution demonstrates how the novel's experimental spirit continues to resonate more than two centuries after its first publication.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54055610319187,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/Tristram.png?v=1782029534"},{"product_id":"the-telephone-book-with-pearls","title":"The Telephone Book (With Pearls)","description":"","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54447313879379,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/TheTelephoneBook.png?v=1785506371"},{"product_id":"close-cropped-tales","title":"Close-Cropped Tales","description":"","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54595768648019,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/DSC4413.png?v=1786802971"},{"product_id":"choosing-green-beans","title":"Choosing: Green Beans","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn this playful book, Baldessari aligns his creative exercise with the Duchampian conception of art as a conceptual game. The rules are explained simply and clearly in both Italian and English at the beginning:\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e“This work is part of a series of works about choosing. In this version a group of green beans was available from which to choose. A participant was asked to choose any three beans from the group for whatever reasons he\/she might have at that moment. A photograph was taken of the selection process. The chosen bean was carried over; the other two beans not chosen were discarded; two new beans were added. The next choice was made, and so on. Each of the participants develops strategies unknown to the other player as the selection process continues until all the beans are used.”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe series was extended, with slight variations in form and concept, to other vegetables and objects, including carrots, asparagus, turnips, and rhubarb. At its core, the project continues to illustrate with serious wit Baldessari’s critique of Clement Greenberg’s formalist conception of aesthetic judgment, specifically the opening paragraph of his “Complaints of an Art Critic”, published in \u003cem\u003eArtforum\u003c\/em\u003e in October 1967:\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e“AESTHETIC JUDGMENTS ARE GIVEN AND CONTAINED IN THE IMMEDIATE EXPERIENCE OF ART. THEY COINCIDE WITH IT; THEY ARE NOT ARRIVED AT AFTERWARDS THROUGH REFLECTION OR THOUGHT; ESTHETIC JUDGEMENTS ARE ALSO INVOLUNTARY; YOU CAN NO MORE CHOOSE WHETHER OR NOT TO LIKE A WORK OF ART THAN YOU CAN CHOOSE TO HAVE SUGAR TASTE SWEET OR LEMONS SOUR. (WHETHER OR NOT ESTHETIC JUDGEMENTS ARE HONESTLY REPORTED IS ANOTHER MATTER).”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFrom his 1968 canvas, which transcribed this passage mot à mot and transformed its written proposition into a work of art, to his later exercises in “choosing” beans, Baldessari repeatedly exposes the arbitrariness of aesthetic rules. By turning aesthetic choice itself into a game governed by arbitrary procedures, he reverses Greenberg’s assertion that aesthetic judgment is involuntary. What Greenberg presents as an instinctive response becomes, for Baldessari, a conscious act of selection, subject to rules, strategies and reflection. The humble green bean thus becomes an unlikely but precise instrument for questioning the authority and inevitability of aesthetic judgment.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54778468532563,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/DSC4526.png?v=1787993872"}],"url":"https:\/\/metabooks.art\/collections\/john-baldessari.oembed","provider":"Metabooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}