I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art

Homage to the Godfather of Conceptual Art

Image by author

“My job is to treat the viewer as an intelligent person. If you serve it to them on a silver platter they haven’t really learned anything. But of course it’s got to be a seductive thing. You’ve got to engage them first. One word following another, like a writer.” (source)

Those are the words of American artist John Baldessari from a 2019 interview with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He has been called the Godfather of Conceptual Art, a Master of Appropriation, and a Surrealist for the Digital Age.

John would scoff at those labels.

Conceptual Art focuses on the idea rather than the execution of the work. It also centralizes the dematerialization of art — an idea cannot be owned, only transmitted. To make his point, in 1970, John cremated all the paintings he had made between 1953 and 1966. Talk about the dematerialization of art. He kept the ashes in an urn shaped like a book.

Image by author appropriated from John Baldessari

John began painting text and images on canvas in the 1960s, which are now considered early examples of Conceptual Art. He explores both written and visual language…