One Must

1997

John Baldessari

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In One Must , an image of a pair of scissors, accompanied by the words of work’s title, poses an ominous question about the relationship between the image and the text. The otherwise banal scissors become suggestively violent in relation to the text, which was originally the title of a print in Francisco de Goya’s Disasters of War series. However, Baldessari is less interested in the logical relationships between text and image than he is with the conceptual leaps that the viewer makes with the limited information provided.

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John Baldessari is one of the most influential contemporary artists by virtue of his own conceptual practice and as teacher at CalArts, where he founded the “post-studio” movement in 1971. Baldessari’s work has assumed various forms for more than three decades, including photography, painting, conceptual gestures, video, books, prints, objects, and installations.

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Colors:

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• caption.n.03
• suggestion.n.04
• violence.n.01
• text.n.01
• riddle.n.01
• scissors.n.01
• photo-conceptualism
• appropriation art
• calarts
• collage
• color photography
• conceptual art
• american
• american conceptual artists
• contemporary artist
• conceptual artist
• postmodern artists
• 1931–2020
• video art
• american contemporary artists