John Baldessari
Brutus Killed Caesar.
1976

Name: Brutus Killed Caesar.
Brand: John Baldessari
Price: 2500 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

BALDESSARI, John. Brutus Killed Caesar. [4] pp. Illustrated with 33 photographic tryptichs. Oblong 8vo., 100 x 275 mm, bound in publisher's spiral-bound wrappers. Preserved in tan cloth box. Akron: The Emily H. Davis Art Gallery of The University of Akron, [1976]. $ 2500.00 First Edition. Printed in a limited edition. The artist John Baldessari juxtaposes three images in a triptych format. Each page repeats the use of the same two portraits: an young man on the left and and an older man on the right. The center image then creates the crucial dialogue between the other two - Baldessari makes use of a variety of objects that could all be used as murder weapons - some a bit more mundane than others: a kitchen knife, a banana peel, an apple and a revolver, a cue ball, a briefcase a wire coat hanger, among others. A very fine copy of this conceptual artist's book.

Creator:

John Baldessari (1931, American)

Creation Year:

1976

Dimensions:

Height: 3.94 in (10 cm)Width: 10.83 in (27.5 cm)

Medium:

Paper

Period:

1970-1979

Condition:

Gallery Location:

New York, NY

Reference Number:

Seller: 1087081stDibs: LU43835435641

View Invoice

Shop All John Baldessari

John Baldessari

Although Conceptual artist John Baldessari is best known for the richly provocative juxtapositions of photographic images and text that characterize his prints and paintings, he actually had something of a traditional art world upbringing — if such a thing exists.

Born in Southern California, Baldessari earned several art degrees, from art education to art history to painting. He also taught art at various institutions such as the California Institute of the Arts throughout his life. Among his many students were David Salle, Tony Oursler, Jim Shaw and Mike Kelley. While helping to shape the art world in Los Angeles, he simultaneously developed his own name as an artist.

In the 1950s, Baldessari’s works were primarily semiabstract paintings, but during the late 1960s, he began to distance himself from painting, as he bristled at the idea of limiting art to a single medium. Baldessari decided to take his career in a dramatically different direction. He burned all his paintings at a funeral home in San Diego, then incorporated the ashes into cookie dough, producing (nonedible) baked goods for an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

“It was a very public and symbolic act,” he said, “like announcing you’re going on a diet in order to stick to it.”

From that point on, Baldessari took on an MO of experimentation, dabbling in mediums from video to printmaking to sculpture. “I just stare at something and say: Why isn’t that art? Why couldn’t that be art?” he said in an interview in 2008.

The works for which Baldessari is most highly regarded, however, are striking collages of images and text — many of which are seemingly nonsensical — such as Tom’s Hand Grips the Steering, Wheel… (2015), in which the title’s text is displayed beneath a hippopotamus. As such is his body of work: bringing a sense of joviality to the sometimes too-serious world of Conceptual art.

Before he died in 2020, Baldessari was honored with the 2014 National Medal of Arts Award, the Americans for the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award, the Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement and more.

Find original John Baldessari art on 1stDibs.