John Baldessari's humour and work go on show at Marian Goodman Gallery

Installation view the London branch of Marian Goodman Gallery, hosting LA artist John Baldessari's first first solo London exhibition for nearly six years
Installation view the London branch of Marian Goodman Gallery, hosting LA first first solo London exhibition for nearly six years
(Image credit: John Baldessari)

If Ed Ruscha is the first pick LA artist, John Baldessari now runs him close. They have worked similar angles of course, smartly matching text to image often. And, as a new show at the London branch of Marian Goodman gallery proves, Baldessari can equal Ruscha for hardboiled absurdism. Ruscha is pop art’s laconic cowboy; Baldessari conceptual art’s professor of deadpan. Both are expert in playing with Hollywood grammar for profoundly comic effect.

‘Pictures and Scripts’, Baldessari’s first solo London exhibition for nearly six years, is a series of 20 new works that pair black and white - with one exception - film stills with blown up snatches of text; here imagined film scripts, often absurd and funny and mostly somehow about movies or art and the market for art.

Baldessari is an obsessive collector and cataloguer of film stills and has used them in his art for decades. He deliberately keeps sources unstated though one still here is definitely of Herbert Lom in The Pink Panther Strikes Again. The stills used in the ‘Pictures and Scripts’ series, often cropped, come with Baldessari’s occasional painted overlays, also in black or white, covering hair and hats and occasionally entire people (no trademark dots though).

Baldessari has been producing these image-text diptychs since the mid-1960s. And ‘Early Work’, showing simultaneously at Marian Goodman’s Paris outpost, takes us back to that part of the artist’s career and even includes a rare 1962 piece that survived Baldessari’s famous ceremonial cremation of 125 of his works produced between 1953 and 1966.

The stills used in the ‘Pictures and Scripts’ series illustrate Baldessari's obsession with colleccting and cataloguing film stills, which he's used in his art for decades

The stills used in the ‘Pictures and Scripts’ series illustrate Baldessari's obsession with colleccting and cataloguing film stills, which he's used in his art for decades

(Image credit: John Baldessari)

The exhibition features 20 new works that pair black and white - with one exception

The exhibition features 20 new works that pair black and white - with one exception - film stills with blown up snatches of text, often absurd and funny and mostly about movies, art and the market for art

(Image credit: press)

'You interested in history Frank?' 2015 in situ.

'You interested in history Frank?' 2015 in situ.

(Image credit: Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery)

'Files toenails', 2015.

'Files toenails', 2015.

(Image credit: Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery)

'Brushes horse hairs from her jeans', 2015.

'Brushes horse hairs from her jeans', 2015.

(Image credit: Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery)

Left: 'A glass of waters sweetheart', 2015. Right: 'What is in the salad?', 2015

Left: 'A glass of waters sweetheart', 2015. Right: 'What is in the salad?', 2015

(Image credit: Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery)

Address 

Marian Goodman Gallery London, 5-8 Lower John Street, London W1F 9DY www.mariangoodman

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