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 12

In The Overlap Series, Baldessari continues to construct relationships between disparate images. He combines two unrelated photographs - a melodramatic film still and a snapshot of a mundane urban vista - using a minimal amount of brushwork to continue elements of one image into the other.

Baldessari uses colour to unify fragments, but also to highlight certain aspects of the original image. In Five Yellow Divisions: With Persons (Black and White) the yellow line links the different situations depicted, but also highlights the emotions in each photograph. In other works, the over-painting is so extensive and seemingly unrestrained that it envelops the figures, resembling Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings.

In recent years, Baldessari’s appropriation and manipulation of found images has become increasingly sophisticated, with the subtle use of recessed and raised surfaces, adding further depth and interest to the picture plane.