In 1992, master of modern American conceptualism John Baldessari (1931-2020) was invited to India. On an artist residency in a swanky modernist villa owned by some wealthy industrialists, he set about documenting, sampling and twisting the world around him, just like he’d always done.
But here the classic Californian Baldessari-isms (palm trees, traffic lights, etc) are replaced with images of Indian street scenes, piles of mopeds, kites being flown from roofs, men on bicycles, endless beautiful flora. Those photos get overpainted and put next to screen-printed newspaper clippings of cricketers and politicians, collaged with huge truck mudflaps painted by local artisans with cartoony visions of demons, mosquitoes and futuristic trains. All those elements get composed into angular assemblages, a snapshot of India in the 1990s.
But I don’t think Baldessari was patronising or self important enough to think he was actually documenting a nation in flux, painting a portrait of nascent industrialisation or western influence post-independence or anything like that. Instead, I think he saw India as a place rich in aesthetic potential, just like anywhere, somewhere filled with signifiers and symbols he could chop up, reassemble and re-codify. This body of work isn’t the best thing he ever did, it’s like John Baldessari’s holiday snaps. But he’s John Baldessari, so even his holiday snaps are pretty great.
