John Baldessari

E-131: Rizzoli International Publications. Very Good. 1990. Hardcover. Hardcover. 4to. Rizzoli, New York. 1990. 256 pgs. Illustrated with 375 photographs. Reprint. DJ has shelf-wear present to the DJ extremities (tear present along the heel of the DJ spine along the front panel). Bound in cloth boards with titles present to the spine and front board. Boards have light shelf-wear present to the extremities. No ownership marks present. Text is clean and free of marks. Binding tight and solid. Juxtaposing images from popular culture and mundane reality, conceptual artist Baldessari turns the vernacular of mass perception back on itself, jolting viewers out of programmed ways of seeing. An artist with a keen sense of humor and an instinctive feel for the absurdity of much of modern culture, he creates open-ended messages, clues for the spectator to decipher. Wedding 375 plates to a perceptive essay that tracks the Southern Californian's ever-shifting modes, this monograph--a tie-in with a touring retrospective--explores Baldessari's imagist "mind games" of the 1960s and '70s, text-and-image parables, composite photoworks blending newsreel-like reportage with fabrication, collages and installations. Van Bruggen ( Bruce Nauman ) illuminates how Baldessari wrests poetry, meaning and hope from alchemical fusions of movie stills, words, billboard posters, ads, old photographs and art-historical references. E-131; 4to 11" - 13" tall; 256 pages .