jESiO: Cliches

Friday, March 4, 2011

Cliches

Cliche: North American Indian

This is the first part of a new series on the blog. My (dumdumdum) day job owns a pretty fantastic art collection that I get to peruse every single day. This is awesome in many ways (until that whole "lost in focus in color" thing rears its head.) Anyway, here's the first of many examples of the best part of the cubicle.

I just got out of a meeting where the walls are covered in the original works of John Baldessari, whose work uses "found photographs of people are amended with colorful dots that blot out the heads of the subjects, redirecting the viewer's attention towards marginal detail. (Amazon)" Above is a digital copy of his "Cliche: North American Indian" which looks way better in person (less intense--more subtelties in color differentiation.)

It's part of the "Cliche" series my company owns. "Cliche" is a set of three lithographs (I believe 50 were made in 1995) that, when viewed together distract me from everything else going on in the room.

Cliche: Japanese

Cliche: Eskimo

Looking at them on a screen diminishes how vibrant and varied the rectangled sections of the series are. In "Cliche: Japanese" (in person) the circles over select faces are faded enough to see the person underneath, but not for everybody. You can't tell this is occurring online.

Also in "Cliche: Eskimo," the pallette is gentle in its transition from pale blue to periwinkle. And the bear's case is much more yellow-orangey than appears here.

Seeing these works on such a regular basis has encouraged me to explore his work further, and I find I absolutely love it. He's really rivalling Maggie Taylor as my favorite living artist now. I just wishlisted his book "John Baldessari: A Print Retrospective from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his Family Foundation" which has over 140 color plates spanning forty years of his work. I'll do a book review later in the year on it, so stay tuned.