Tag Archives: Getty Research Institute

JOHN BALDESSARI

Leave a reply

John Baldessari’s art is cheerfully laconic. It strikes this special tone, broadcast as if on its own frequency, from its beginnings until the present day. Is there a method to it? And, if so, what does it consist of? The simpler answer points to an ever-surprising change in perspective that Baldessari offers his viewers. A slightly shifted view of art, the world, and its image…

But there is more: a daring intellectual feat in his approach, precisely because it includes acting stupid. Baldessari assumes a calculated risk that he will not be understood fully, but with the aim of deriving intellectual profit from that. — Bice Curiger*

*Bice Curiger, “Doubly Detached, Doubly Immersed,” in John Baldessari: Pure Beauty (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2009).

John Baldessari was born in National City, California, in 1931 and died on January 2, 2020 at home in Venice Beach.

John Baldessari, from top: Goya Series: And, 1997, courtesy and © the Museum of Modern Art, New York, SCALA/Art Resource, New York; artist unknown [John Baldessari], late 1960s, reproduced in David Antin’s article “John Baldessari,” Studio International, July–August, 1970; Beach Scene/Nuns/Nurse (With Choices), 1991, courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery; Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line {Best of Thirty-Six Attempts) (detail), 1973, courtesy and © the estate of the artist, Giampaolo Prearo Editore S.r.L.,Galleria Toselli, Milan, and the Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; The Overlap Series: Jogger (with Cosmic Event), 2000–2001; Wrong, 1966–1968, courtesy of Museum Associates, LACMA and Marian Goodman Gallery; Eight Soups: Corn Soup, 2012, (borrowed an image from Henri Matisse, Goldfish and Sculpture, 1912), courtesy of Gemini G.E.L.; Beethoven’s Trumpet , photograph by Andreu Dalmau; Three Red Paintings, 1988, photograph courtesy and © Douglas M. Parker; Tips for Artists Who Want to Sell, 1966–1968, courtesy of the Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica; Various Shadows, 1984, courtesy of Jim Tananbaum/Prospect Ventures. Images courtesy and © the estate of John Baldessari and Marian Goodman Gallery.

BAUHAUS — BUILDING THE NEW ARTIST

Leave a reply

In conjunction with BAUHAUS BEGINNINGS, open for one more week at Getty Center, BAUHAUS—BUILDING THE NEW ARTIST is an online exhibition that “offers an in-depth look into the school’s novel pedagogy.”*

Following the end of World War I, the provisional government of the short-lived Free State of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach in Germany initiated an effort to reestablish two schools, the Weimar School of Applied Arts (Weimar Kunstgewerbeschule) and the neighboring Academy of Fine Arts (Hochschule für bildende Kunst), as a single, unified institution…

Upon the recommendation of Belgian architect Henry van de Velde, who had previously directed the Weimar School of Applied Arts, the Berlin architect Walter Gropius was invited to head the new school. Gropius’ request to rechristen the institution under a new name, BAUHAUS STATE SCHOOL (Staatliches Bauhaus), was approved in March 1919.*

BAUHAUS—BUILDING THE NEW ARTIST*

Online exhibition in conjunction with

BAUHAUS BEGINNINGS

Through October 13.

Getty Center

1200 Getty Center Drive, Brentwood, Los Angeles.

From top: Postcard sent to Jan Tschichold with aerial photograph of Bauhaus Dessau, Walter Gropius, architect, 1926, photograph by Junkers Luftbild, 1926, gelatin silver print on postcard, Jan and Edith Tschichold Papers, 1899–1979; Vassily Kandinsky, Color Triangle, circa 1925–1933, graphite and gouache on paper, Vassily Kandinsky Papers, 1911–1940; students in a workshop at the Bauhaus Dessau (2), photographer(s) unknown, undated, gelatin silver prints; Erich Mzozek, Still-life drawing with analytical overlay, circa 1930, graphite on paper and vellum, © Estate Erich Mrozek; Geometric study of spiral form, artist unknown, undated, graphite and colored graphite on paper; Friedl Dicker, Light-dark contrast study for Johannes Itten’s Preliminary Course, 1919, charcoal and pastel collage on black paper. ; Pamphlet for Farben Licht-Spiele (Color-light plays), Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack, 1925, letterpress, Bauhaus Typography Collection, 1919–1937, © Kaj Delugan; Erich Mzozek, Study for Vassily Kandinsky’s Farbenlehre (Course on color), circa 1929–1930, collage with gouache on paper, © Estate Erich Mrozek. All images courtesy and © the Bauhaus-Archiv and the Getty Research Institute.

HARALD SZEEMANN — SELECTED WRITINGS

Leave a reply

Harald Szeemann (1933–2005)—curator, artist, art historian, and “secretary general” of the legendary documenta 5—was an exhibition maker nonpareil. HARALD SZEEMANN: SELECTED WRITINGS—published in conjunction with last year’s exhibition Harald Szeemann: Museum of Obsessions at the Getty Research Institute (home of the Harald Szeemann Papers)—brings together over seventy essays and interviews, many published in English for the first time.

Richly illustrated throughout, the book contains a 20-page section of plates, including Szeemann’s artwork, exhibition diagrams, installation views, archival photographs, and other ephemera.

“I’m an existentialist. You are thrown in the universe from somewhere and are, once here, responsible for your acts. But it’s always a privilege to fall into a well-made bed. In this case, the Kunsthalle Bern in 1961…

“The historical moment, when the image of the creator/curator became conscious and evident, happened in 1969, when I organized When Attitudes Become Form and the artists arrived and installed their works and the TV reports publicized it. Beuys put his grease on the walls, Heizer made a hole in the public sidewalk, Artschwager distributed his blps in the city, Barry put the building under radiation, Weiner removed a square meter of wall, Ruthenbeck ruined the wooden floor with his wet ashes, Serra threw melted lead against the wall, etc., etc. This was no longer perceived as an art exhibition but as an archaic provocation—not by the artists, but by the curator who allowed it.” — Harald Szeemann*

HARALD SZEEMANN: SELECTED WRITINGS. Edited by Doris Chon, Glenn Phillips, and Pietro Rigolo. Translated by Jonathan Blower and Elizabeth Tucker. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2018.

In New York, the Swiss Institute has restaged GRANDFATHER: A PIONEER LIKE US, the 1974 exhibition Szeemann organized in his Bern apartment two years after documenta 5.

HARALD SZEEMANN—GRANDFATHER: A PIONEER LIKE US

Through August 18.

Swiss Institute

38 St. Marks Place, New York City.

*”Making Things Possible: A Conversation with Harald Szeemann.” Interview by Beti Žerovc. In Harald Szeemann—Selected Writings, 383–393.

From top, left to right: Harald Szeemann, in the 1990s in the Fabbrica Rosa, his office and archive in Maggia, Switzerland, photograph Fredo Meyer-Henn, State Archive of Canton Bern; Szeemann’s address list for his 1968 research trip to New York—for the Kunsthalle Bern exhibition Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form (1969)—includes contact info for Eva Hesse, Hans Haacke, Sol LeWitt, Lucy Lippard, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Richard Serra, and Lucas Samaras; Szeemann (seated) on the last night of documenta 5, 1972, photograph by Balthasar Burkhard; Getty Publications book cover; Lidija Delić, poster art commissioned by the Swiss Institute for the Grandfather: A Pioneer Like Us exhibition; Oasis No. 7, Haus-Rucker-Co (Laurids Ortner, Manfred Ortner, Klaus Pinter, Günter Zamp Kelp), 1972, documenta 5: Questioning Reality—Image Worlds Today, Kassel, 1972; part of Szeemann’s rubber stamp collection; Szeemann. Images courtesy the Harald Szeeman Papers at the Getty Research Institute, © J. Paul Getty Trust.

BAUHAUS BEGINNINGS AT THE GETTY

Leave a reply

“The aim is an alliance of the arts under the wing of great architecture.” — Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus

BAUHAUS BEGINNINGS, now at the Getty Center, celebrates the centenary of the founding of the school in Weimar.

The exhibition “reexamines the founding principles of this landmark institution,” considering the school’s “early dedication to spiritual expression and its development of a curriculum based on elements deemed fundamental to all forms of artistic practice.”*

BAUHAUS BEGINNINGS*

Through October 13.

Getty Center

1200 Getty Center Drive, Brentwood, Los Angeles.

From top: Léna Bergner, Durchdringung (Penetration) for Paul Klee‘s course, circa 1925–1932, © the heirs of Léna Bergner; Walter Gropius, undated photograph by Lucia Moholy, © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York and VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn; Gerd Balzer, Color wheel for Vassily Kandinsky’s Preliminary Course, 1929, gouache on paper, pasted on black paper; Material exercises in paper (2), photographs by Alfred Ehrhardt, circa 1928–1929, © Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung; Erich Mzozek, Study for Vassily Kandinsky’s Farbenlehre (Course on color), circa 1929–1930, collage with gouache on paper, © Estate Erich Mrozek; Léna Bergner, Carpet design, circa 1925–1932, © the heirs of Léna Bergner; Joost Schmidt, Form and color study, circa 1929–1930; Benita Koch-Otte, Einfamilienwohnhaus auf der Ausstellung des Staatlichen Bauhauses (Single-family house at the exhibition of the State Bauhaus), 1923, Georg Muche, architect, 1923, from Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar 1919–1923 (Munich: Bauhausverlag, 1923), p. 165, courtesy and © Bodelschwingh Foundation Bethel; Lyonel Feininger, Villa am Strand (Villa on the shore), 1921, from Bauhaus Drucke: Neue Europaeische Graphik, Erste Mappe [first portfolio], Meister d. Staatlichen Bauhauses in Weimar (Potsdam: Müller, 1921), © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York and VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn; Ringl + Pit (Grete Stern and Ellen Auerbach), Bald Head (Johannes Itten), 1930, printed 1985, The Jewish Museum, © Ringl + Pit, courtesy Robert Mann Gallery, New York; Hilde Reindl, Color wheel and tone study for Paul Klee’s Course, circa 1927. Images courtesy of the Getty Research Institute.

THE DIDEROT PROJECT

Leave a reply

In conjunction with the exhibition Artists and Their Books–Books and Their Artists, printer and publisher Ken Botnick—in search of a “contemporary visual metaphor expressed in design, material, and print” of Denis Diderot’s advocacy of “transparency in society, with a call for less mystery and more mastery”—conceived the DIDEROT PROJECT.

This week at the Getty Center, Botnick will discuss how his project about Diderot’s Encyclopédie “evolved over time into a multi-voice conversation on the nature of craft, tools, memory, and imagination, while provoking questions about authorship in artists’ books.”*

 

KEN BOTNICK—THE DIDEROT PROJECT: TRANSPARENCY AS METAPHOR

Thursday, September 13, at 7 pm.

ARTISTS AND THEIR BOOKS—BOOKS AND THEIR ARTISTS

Through October 28.

Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Brentwood, Los Angeles.

See: primo.getty.edu/primo_library/libweb

Above: Jean Antoine Houdon, Denis Diderot, 1773, marble. Image credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Below: Diderot Project, page spread introducing the section “Imagination: The Senses,” Ken Botnick, 2015.

Image credit: Getty Research Institute.