John Baldessari was the artist’s first full-scale retrospective. Throughout the late 1960s and 1970s, Baldessari pioneered the use of found photography, appropriated images, and metaconceptual text to examine the arbitrariness of language and contextuality of meaning. His theoretical stance and sardonic style would influence a generation of artists, including Jack Goldstein, Cindy Sherman, Barbara Krueger, and David Salle.
John Baldessari comprised approximately one hundred works from 1967 to 1990, including paintings, phototext canvases, composite photoworks, and books. A program of his films and videotapes from 1970 to 1977 were presented as part of the show. Baldessari additionally created a large vinyl mural specially for the retrospective, using photographic imagery reproduced by an early, computer-activated device; at MOCA Grand Avenue, it hung outside the main entrance to the museum.
The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue.
The exhibition traveled from MOCA to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Musee d`Art Contemporain de Montreal. John Baldessari was organized by Coosje Van Bruggen for The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.