Baldessari

I get the feeling that Baldessari was constantly in search of something unique and different, not only to fulfill his artistic and creative desires, but also to provide something fresh and new that would challenge the viewer. First, he felt discontent with the notion that the definition of art only included painting and sculpture, so he began to incorporate photography into the final product of his work, rather than a means to an end as he had before while he was painting. Another way in which Baldessari strived to come up with a completely original type of art was by rejecting the methods he had heard other artists used, namely the silkscreen process used by Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg. There seems to be in his work a conflict between wanting to be accepted as an art form (printing photographs on canvases) while also trying to challenge the visual culture of the time (using shapes other than rectangles for his compositions). He talks about playing a flirtatious guessing game with the viewer by providing an entirely new perspective that will capture their attention. This idea shows the progression of photography as an art form from having to emulate painting to be considered art to utilizing the unique features of photography to challenge the definition of art.

One of the first photographers we talked about in class was Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre. He attempted to elevate photography as an art form by drawing upon painting traditions and creating compositions that replicated popular subjects in painting. His daguerreotype, Still Life, is a perfect example of this. Daguerre photographed a still life seen of objects from an artists workshop and showed how the new technology of photography could provide a different take on old traditions.