John Baldessari 1931 USA
The Telephone Book (1988)
The conceptual artist’s large collection of film stills is given a new narrative context through his intuitive cropping, collage and juxtapositions. The Telephone Book contains many of the graphic elements which Baldessari brought into his large photo-collage works of the 1980s – particularly the odd but distinctive shapes of the cropped images and the brightly colored circles or dots used to cover faces or other important details.?The Telephone Book is articulated mainly through the use of dramatic stills shots. In the opening sequence there is an image of a phone caught between two different persons’ hands; then the neck of a woman dancing with a male partner – again displaying pearls; and a third image in which another woman in a black cocktail dress wearing another string of pearls speaks on the phone. The sequence’s structure replays the main themes of the title through a careful deconstruction of the elements – the telephone and pearls – into variations on their identity. The same elements show up, but as different versions, and the assumption of their relation is strong enough to carry through the book into every appearance of phone or pearls. Male power and female objectification are presented as pictorial and cultural stereotypes… (Drucker, The Century of Artists’ Books, pp. 222-3). 66pp unpaginated, 21.0 x 14.6 cm, soft cover, 45 colour reproductions. Imshoot, Uitgers for IC, Belgium.
Drucker, Johanna, 1995, The Century of Artists’ Books, Granary Books, NY.
Grahame, Noreen (ed.) 1991, Artists’ Books – The Catalogue, grahame galleries + editions
Lauf, Cornelia and Phillpot, Clive, 1998, Artist/Author Contemporary Artists’ Books, Distributed Art Publishers Inc. and The American Federation of Arts, New York.
Zorro (Two Gestures and One Mark) (1998)
Gestures taken from films (Humphrey Bogart, Jean Paul Belmondo. The recreated gestures are taken from three popular films, Jean-Paul Belmondo wipes his lip, Zorro leaves his mark, and Humphey Bogart chuckles. A flip book without commentary. 152 pp with 76 images, 15.0 x 10.0 cm. Edition of 800 signed and numbered copies, and an edition unsigned and unnumbered. Gallery holds signed copy No 196/800. Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Köln: Oktagon Verlag,
Moeglin-Delcroix, Anne, Dematteis, L, Maffei, G & Rimmaudo, A, 2004, guardare/raccontre/pensare/conservare (looking. telling. thinking. collecting) four direction of the artist’s book from the Sixties to the present, Casa del Mantegna, Mantova, Edizioni Corraini.
John Baldessari and Meg Cranston
Lamb (1989)
This book was produced as a supplement to an installation created for IVAM, Valencia, Spain, May 1989. 17.0 x 12.5cm, 12pp. IVAM Centre Julio Gonzalez, Valencia, Spain.
Grahame, Noreen (ed.) 1991, Artists’ Books – The Catalogue, grahame galleries + editions, Brisbane.