Thursday, January 26, 2006

John Baldessari At Sing Sing

The first thing Bush said to me when I came in was, “I got beef with you.” And I asked him if it had to do with the John Baldessari reading.

He said, “YEAH. The Baldessari guy…” and I said, “well lets discuss it.” And so we did.

Then Blal chimed in his agreement--- and I looked around and realized that something was up..they all weren’t happy.

Blal immediately said, " I got what he was saying in the first three pages, but the author was just boring. The way they wrote it was boring."

Wow, i thought, what tough critics!

Feeling like it was going to get really nasty if I didn’t make a little disclaimer- I said, ok, last time I just handed the essay out. I had been reading this myself and felt it would be an amazing thing to bring in because it went into John’s own life experience that led him to thinking about the things that came into his work and allowed it to develop.

I then explained that the reason I brought John in was because I felt he was one of the most important artists of this current and past Century and that the ideas that he was introducing changed the way that art was being thought of- and because we were working in abstraction and shifted to the conceptual just in our own class projects- i thought he was perfect because John himself was embroiled in abstraction and was one of the pivotal figures to move from this area into conceptual art- and really he was one of the first conceptual artists period. I also said, that my generation of artists in particular owes a great deal to John Baldessari, and even if you renounce his work and his ideas, he made a huge impact that is important to talk about if we're going to enter conceptual art.

“Now, I want to know why you’re upset.”

Juan was the first to get into it. “Now, I know exactly what he’s trying to do because I myself would go there, but I really don’t want to go into that place of thought because I’m in a prison. That’s how this is different. You can’t think like this in a prison. People will think I’m crazy.”

It was clear to me that they had all been talking about this amongst themselves.

Blal said, “You know, when I was in school, the artists were like nerds. We were like these other kids who were into history, or math or something.”

Bush said, “You know, he was already an outcast because he was so tall.”

Bush kept saying, "he was really trying to do something different. That's what he was up to. He just didn't want to do the norm."

Jay then said that he felt that John Baldessari was making him realize that being an artist was having that ability to make connections between things.

He then looked over at Juan and recalled a conversation they had had, "Juan, remember you were telling me about how you saw the letter 'A' in a beautiful scripted style and then one day you saw that exact letter in someone’s hair. You saw it in the back of his head."

I looked over at Juan and said, you mean, you just saw it there? And he said, "Yeah, the shape of his hairs had made that 'A'"

Jay then added for the rest of the class, "its like when you get a Mazda RX 7 and you start seeing them everywhere! You've tapped into that model." --- i almost laughed out loud at that comparisson, but it was amazing how everyone else seemed to say, "ooooh."

Someone then pointed out this paragraph where John mentions that he finally found some artists who were actually interested in what he was doing and he said, "now i can finally just do what ever i want." And Blal said, see that's really what he was looking for ! I said, well isn't it like gold when you find someone who actually is on to what you're on to? Then i went again back to Juan-- and his point about people making fun of you if you go out into that realm of "insanity."

We went right in to the discussion which was probably the best and most intense conversation we have had to date.

Juan was the first to really express his problems with John. He said that basically he knew what he was trying to do, but didn’t feel like he personally could go there himself beecause of the fact that he’s in prison and being in prison was different because people are going to watch you and think that you're out of your mind.

I asked Juan to point out something in particular that he felt was too far out there, and he said, "well basically, its when something can't be interpreted. I don't want to make work that you can't possibly interpret." and I asked him to find me any example of work which couldn't be interpreted, but he couldn't exactly do this. He pointed out the "back of the trucks" piece and said, he really felt that this one he knew what John was doing- he was trying to find similarities in shapes, and he kept having this dream, Juan said, that made its sense in the trucks.

So, I then brought the conversation back into that question. "So what about the making sense of the world in this way?"

And that's when Bush said, "See, if he's trying to make sense, he's actually making chaos!"

It seemed that more and more the men were feeling like they were getting an understanding of what he was doing- but I also expressed that I am not completely sure myself and that's what I love about John's work.

Then Bush said another mind blowing thing, when he said, "You know, he didn't know himself what he was doing in the beginning. The only thing he knew was that he wanted to make a shift." I then asked, how he knew that he was setting out to do that from the get go? And then Jay chimed in, because he was saying that he was looking at who had done what already and he kept thinking that he was going to do something different.

I felt the need to continually come back to Juan's comment about not being able to make this work in prison. I said to Juan, I really don't have any idea what its like in here as you know, and perhaps it is simplistic of me to assume that the way John tried to challenge ideas of the norm would be possible--- but then I said, don't you think that the people in the town of National City would have thought what he was doing was crazy? And I brought up my own work and said, I have experienced it many times myself- people thinking I'm really being out there and crazy.

Then Jay interrupted, "pioneers always seem like they went way out there."

I kept having moments where I remembered how I’m just this really young female, probably at least 10 years if not 20 years younger than some of the men--- and from a position of such priveledge to be as educated…

So I had their homework assignment be to write 10 pages of their own thoughts on art and their own biography.

I then addressed our assignments to show how even these were influenced by this way of thinking--- to look at something for hours and think about how to draw it. The idea to come up with a story from a photograph and create a drawing with a narrative with it. The idea to look directly into your world and make work from what you see and your experience.

I didn't want to just explain John in such a simple way--- to them, but i wanted to emphasize that John was one of those few artists in history who managed to really make a shift in the way people thought about art. Also, what I wanted specifically to bring in this essay for, was that Coosje Van Broogen explains that John was really living in the outskirsts of any art society. He was in a small town-- I asked the men, "have any of you ever been to National City?" and they all said, no--- and I said, so here is my comparisson--- and particularly to what Juan- you're saying about everyone in this jail making fun of you -- imagine John in this town- a town where there were probably very few artists at all- doing this completely radical work--- making things that even now seem shocking- tapping the depths of his imagination.