Shaping Beauty

Two concurrent exhibitions in London and Paris are looking at the practice of text-image artist John Baldessari, spanning his career from the early days to his latest output. Marian Goodman Gallery - London is hosting Pictures & Scripts — the American’s most recent exploration of words and pictures — while at the gallery’s Paris counterpart there is a retrospective entitled Early Work that selects from Baldessari’s first forays into the genre and includes many rarely-seen works.

Baldessari trained as a painter but began experimenting with incorporating text into his work in the mid-1960s; during the ’70s he continued to evolve his practice to encompass film and sculpture. In Pictures & Scripts the artist plays with cinema genres such as westerns and gangster movies, using stills that are de-contextualised through exaggerated cropping or otherwise subverted through a painting intervention. Allied to the imagery, a text provides seemingly incongruous dialogue from abstract scenes, presented in the recognisable film script format but often absurdly at odds with its accompanying visual, forcing the viewer to reformulate what may be going on. The London show runs until 25 April, while Early Work is on show at Galerie Marian Goodman, Paris, until 11 April.

img.0John Baldessari Pictures & Scripts: With a quick flick of his knife., 2015 Diptych; varnished inkjet print on canvas with acrylic paint 108 x 78 5/8 x 1 1/2 in. (274.3 x 199.7 x 3.8 cm) Courtesy the Artist and Marian Goodman Gallery © John Baldessari

img.1John Baldessari Pictures & Scripts

img.2John Baldessari Pictures & Scripts: Brushes horse hairs from her jeans., 2015 Diptych; varnished inkjet print on canvas with acrylic paint 71 3/4 x 107 3/4 x 1 1/2 in. (182.2 x 273.7 x 3.8 cm) Courtesy the Artist and Marian Goodman Gallery © John Baldessari

img.3John Baldessari Pictures & Scripts: The Itsy Bitsy Spider., 2015 Diptych; varnished inkjet print on canvas with acrylic paint 108 x 63 3/4 x 1 1/2 in. (274.3 x 161.9 x 3.8 cm) Courtesy the Artist and Marian Goodman Gallery © John Baldessari

img.4John Baldessari Pictures & Scripts: You look lugubrious., 2015 Diptych; varnished inkjet print on canvas with acrylic paint 59 5/8 x 107 3/4 x 1 1/2 in. (151.4 x 273.7 x 3.8 cm) Courtesy the Artist and Marian Goodman Gallery © John Baldessari

img.5John Baldessari Pictures & Scripts

img.6John Baldessari Pictures & Scripts: A glass of water sweetheart., 2015 Diptych; varnished inkjet print on canvas with acrylic paint 108 x 87 5/8 x 1 1/2 in. (274.3 x 222.6 x 3.8 cm) Courtesy the Artist and Marian Goodman Gallery © John Baldessari

img.7John Baldessari Pictures & Scripts

img.8John Baldessari Pictures & Scripts: You have fingers like an artist., 2015 Diptych; varnished inkjet print on canvas with acrylic paint 52 1/8 x 107 5/8 x 1 1/2 in. (132.4 x 273.4 x 3.8 cm) Courtesy the Artist and Marian Goodman Gallery © John Baldessari

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