John Baldessari, I Will Not Make Anymore Boring Art:
John Baldessari (CA, 1931-2020), I Will Not Make Anymore Boring Art, Lithograph, 1971, pencil signed and dated 71 and marked NSCAD IMP. (ie. printed by Nova Scotia College of Art and Design) along right edge, a rare printers proof prior to the edition of 50, [Baldessari’s catalogue raisonne lists one (documented) printers proof], on Arches paper with slight deckle, printed to sheet edge at bottom, with blind stamp for collaborating printer Robert Rogers lower right corner, printed by the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design Lithography Workshop, published by the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, framed.
This was a small editon of 50 with one Printers Proof (documented). ‘I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art’ was Baldessari’s first print and he made it as a fundraiser for the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, where the artist was invited to mount an exhibition (April 1-10, 1971). Because exhibition and travel funds were lacking, Baldessari devised the show through instructions that he wrote out in a letter to the curator, Charlotte Townsend. Baldessari proposed that the students write: “I will not make any more boring art” on the blank walls of the gallery. By the end of the show, the students had nearly covered the gallery walls with the repeated sentence. On a notecard found in the studio files, Baldessari states, “This piece was for an exhibit I was asked to make at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Since there was no money for me to go there to do the show, I asked that the walls remain bare and any one [sic] that wanted to write this sentence on the walls for as many times as they wished, could do so. The idea was a Christian one of atonement, of punishment of oneself for one’s sins and of public confession. At the end of the show, the walls were fairly well covered. The genesis was my dissatisfaction with the fallout of Minimalism.”
In the same year, Baldessari made a black-and-white vedeotape of the same name (Electronic Arts Intermix [EAI] New York) where the artist (shown only by his hands) performs the act of writing the sentence repeatedly with pen and paper. While the lithograph was made without direct supervision of the artist, Baldessari provided the imagery, which is the repeated sentence in his handwriting (Hurowitz, Sharon Coplan, and John Baldessari. John Baldessari: A Catalogue Raisonné of Prints and Multiples, 1971-2007. 1st ed. Hudson Hills Press, 2009, p. 52)
Measurements: Height: of paper 22 1/4 in. x Width: 30 in.
Condition:
Good condition, stain on edge of paper near signature with minor abrasion to the left of signature, mat burn, edges secured by artists tape, very minor foxing, small tear at upper right edge.
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