John Baldessari

Pure Beauty

Tate Modern 13 October 2009  –  10 January 2010

Explore:

• Interview
• Room 1
• Room 2
• Room 3
• Room 4
• Room 5
• Room 6
• Room 7
• Room 8
• Room 9
• Room 10
• Room 11
• Room 12
• Room 13

Room 11

Baldessari’s multi-part works became increasingly complicated constructions, with the shapes often following the contours of the body and greater numbers of framed and unframed images being combined. Dots no longer suffice, and entire bodies are coloured in, creating grey, orange, and blue silhouettes that obliterate and simultaneously emphasise the figures. Lengthy titles describe the various components, but also give crucial clues as to how the work can be read.

The primary colours of the over-painting often belie dark and disturbing subject matter. Inventory combines black and white images of shoppers amongst well-stocked supermarket shelves with a photograph of a train car piled high with the naked corpses of concentration camp victims. Based on Baldessari’s childhood memories of hearing about the Holocaust and his sense of the fragility of civilisation, this juxtaposition highlights the pervasiveness of consumerism and its potential to increase self-indulgence and dull social consciousness. We are forced to remember a time when people were treated like objects, numbered, inventoried, stacked.