John Baldessari
American, 1931–2020
The Fallen Easel
INV-1192
John Baldessari
American, 1931–20201988
The Fallen Easel
John Baldessari American, 1931–2020 →Conceptual Artphotographic processphotography
Date
1988
Medium
Photolithographs (9)
Dimensions
53 × 63.4 cm; 52 × 43.5 cm; 35 × 170 cm; 142 × 43 cm; other various dimensions
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Gift of David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg
An influential pioneer of Conceptual Art, John Baldessari began appropriating film stills, advertisements, and found photographs in the 1980s to examine the social impact of mass culture. Using photographic excerpts in unorthodox arrangements, he highlights dissonance and gaps in meaning to undermine expectations for how images function. The Fallen Easel employs a framed, multipart composition to suggest its own physical instability and thereby underscore the "fall" of easel painting from the apex of fine art to a grammar of simple color combinations. The colored dots, placed to obscure identities or expressions, additionally frustrate conventional markers of meaning in photographs.
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