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 7

Concerned that a single image could not be the final word on anything, Baldessari used to go around for days ‘trying to look between things instead of at things’. This approach led to works like Car Color Series: All Cars Parked on the West Side of Main Street…, for which Baldessari photographed the doors of parked cars, arranging them like a colour chart in the same order as the cars were parked. Where there was no car, a blank space is left on the wall. Whilst focusing on ‘between things’, Baldessari began to question how a work is demarcated and what the edge of the work should look like.

Though Baldessari’s focus shifted to colour, his commitment to ordering systems was maintained, with the colour wheel providing the basic structure for numerous works. One example is Six Colourful Inside Jobs, in which a decorator paints a white cubicle a different colour every day. Filmed from above and played at high speed, an ordinary activity becomes mesmerising by taking on a new spatial and temporal dimension.