There are certain creations that have defined beauty for generations: Renoir's pudgy, pink nude; Rothko's brilliant blocks of color that seem to vibrate; Michelangelo's naked young man in marble, with a slingshot on his shoulder.
In Venice, Calif., 81-year-old artist John Baldessari respects these definitions — and then turns them upside down. Baldessari is an icon in some art circles, especially in Southern California. Six-foot-seven, with long white hair and a beard, he's been called "a towering figure." Thoughtful and provocative, he has burned his own paintings, put colored dots over faces in photographs, and covered floors at the Los Angeles County Museum with a carpet of blue sky and puffy white clouds.
Lots of times, a Baldessari makes you smile, then go ... "Huh?" In his sunny studio, the artist says he's trying to slow us down, to look in new ways.
"You know, when you're sitting in a dentist office or doctor's office, and you look in a magazine and, and you go, 'What was that?' I would like people to have that feeling, you know, that, 'Wait, what did I just see?' " Baldessari says with a laugh.
Like with the colored dots pasted onto photographs — they're actually price stickers. Over the years he'd been collecting black-and-white news images — pictures of people at various civic occasions.
"I just got so tired of looking at these faces," Baldessari says — faces of mayors shaking hands with firefighters, faces of local officials at ribbon-cutting ceremonies.
In 1985, in a fit of pique, Baldessari covered the faces with colored dots.
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