Fingerprints and footprints can be repeated, and that's why I make prints endlessly. I've always said, "Every artist should have a cheap line." Inexpensive art should be available for all, and printmaking is an excellent answer.
John Baldessari
“Artists' books began to proliferate in the sixties and seventies in the prevailing climate of social and political activism. Inexpensive, disposable editions were one manifestation of the dematerialization of the art object and the new emphasis on process.... It was at this time too that a number of artist-controlled alternatives began to develop to provide a forum and venue for many artists denied access to the traditional gallery and museum structure. Independent art publishing was one of these alternatives, and artists' books became part of the ferment of experimental forms.”
—Joan Lyons
The Artist's Printed Extension
Cover to Cover: Artists' Books & Ephemera
Artists who publish books of documentation are, in a sense, using the artform to its simplest degree. —Tim Guest, 1981
Sharing an artwork through the very public method of printing and reproduction is the epitome of democratic dissemination. In their seminal 1981 publication Books By Artists, Tim Guest and Germano Celant begin by addressing their audience’s predictable desire to define a book. They suggest that it is not really possible – or necessary – to define what an artist book is, because any given work becomes a conceptual extension of the artist and is therefore an object of infinite incarnations.
There is too frequently a misinterpretation of printed works and editions as lesser commodities in the market. With artist’s books, the goal was often to distance an artist’s idea from the proverbial canvas, to use words and non-dimensional media as a means to engender and distribute a creative philosophy. Such efforts often led to the creation of superbly idiosyncratic editioned works that succinctly communicate an artist’s entire conceptual foundation, however ineffable. In this way, the artist’s book and the development of conceptual art are inextricably linked. Take, for example, Seth Siegelaub’s July, August, September 1969 exhibition catalogue in which the book is the exhibition. On its pages, it brings together eleven works from eleven artists working in separate locations, works that never physically shared premises themselves.
For artists like John Baldessari and Ed Ruscha, whose broad outputs often hinged on the collision of word and image, the book became a quintessential medium. One of my favorites from this selection is Baldessari’s rare Brutus Killed Caesar, in which two unknown antagonists face each other with a randomized household object between them. It is understood that these objects are murder weapons, but nothing violent takes place outside of the viewer’s imagination, likely shaped by earlier historical texts like Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. Brilliant. Another scarce title herewith is Ruscha’s Dutch Details. Comprised of multiple images taken by the artist showing bridges in The Netherlands, it plays off of his Every Building on the Sunset Strip from five years earlier. Oblong as well, with large fold-outs, this book was very difficult to produce and the publisher did not fulfill the edition, therefore making this the rarest of Ruscha’s coveted artist books.
The book’s potential for comprehensively documenting an ephemeral work or performance was critical for many artists, including Gordon Matta-Clark and Bruce Nauman, the latter whom made an artist’s book (Burning Small Fires) about burning another artist’s book (Ruscha’s Various Small Fires and Milk).
The pursuit to collect such a wide and comprehensive library of these titles is a passionate endeavor, and it is my view that no collection could be complete without the artist’s book. A personal library needs this texture to augment the rigid monographs and academic surveys that equate the bulk of most collections. Whether a single rarity catches your eye or you’re drawn to group lots from the likes of Christian Boltanski, Gilbert & George, Richard Prince, and Sol LeWitt, Cover to Cover is a fantastic opportunity to bolster an existing reading room or to plant the seed of a collection to cherish for years to come.
—Peter Jefferson, Senior Specialist
John Baldessari b. 1931
Renowned conceptual artist John Baldessari came of age in California, studying art education and art history between San Diego State College and the University of California, Berkeley. Structures of pedagogy and art historical precedent would continue to influence his work even as he made a radical split from gestural painting and moved into experimentation with a wide variety of media and modes. In 1970, Baldessari ceremoniously marked this passage with “The Cremation Project,” in which he burnt the majority of his paintings created before 1966 and then baked the ashes into cookies.
Though Baldessari consistently defied categorization, much of his work addressed the uneasy relationship between image and word. "I've often thought of myself as a frustrated writer," John Baldessari once confessed. "I consider a word and an image of equal weight, and a lot of my work comes out of that kind of thinking." He became perhaps best known for his tongue-in-cheek photomontages, which brought sardonic tidbits of punny text into conversation with found and reappropriated images. Although textual elements gradually vanished from Baldessari's work beginning in the early 1970s, the essential, underlying questions that drove his earlier work remained.
Beyond his art practice, Baldessari had a considerable influence on contemporary art through his role as an educator. He taught at CalArts from 1970 to 1988 and at the University of California at Los Angeles from 1996 to 2007, influencing an upcoming generation that include Mike Kelley, Richard Prince, and David Salle. Baldessari’s works are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and many others.
Upcoming Lots John Baldessari
Auction Results John Baldessari
