Live Auction 5710Post War and Contemporary Art Day Auction
John Baldessari (B. 1931)
Lot 227

John Baldessari (B. 1931)

Various Chairs

Closed12 October 2012

Price Realised

GBP 109,250

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John Baldessari (B. 1931)
Various Chairs
acrylic on black and white photographs in artist's frame, in three parts
overall: 44 x 67 3/8in. (111.8 x 173cm.)
(3)Executed in 1986

Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles.
Private Collection.
Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles.
Private Collection.
Monika Sprüth Galerie, Cologne.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.

Specialist note

'Inevitably one begins to imagine a story to which both scenes belong. As Baldessari comments, 'while we're looking at a specific thing, something else is happening over there at the same time, and I'm interested in that something else, which, however, we can't always catch if we try to get it directly.' Arranging with a visual and representational system what at first glance seems disconnected represents an attempt to make a visual interpretation of the inevitable randomness and many-voiced quality of real life. In the medium of film and its symbolic images, Baldessari found the detour that favours an indirect but hence all the more effective approach to reality.'
(J. Baldessari and R. Fuchs in John Baldessari: Pure Beauty, exh. cat., London, Tate Modern, 2011, p. 244).