{"id":1381,"date":"2015-12-01T03:10:27","date_gmt":"2015-12-01T03:10:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/guelphoutdoorschool.wordpress.com\/?p=1381"},"modified":"2016-06-09T15:57:35","modified_gmt":"2016-06-09T19:57:35","slug":"john-baldessari-teaching-a-plant-the-alphabet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/experimentalstudio.ca\/outdoorschool\/2015\/12\/01\/john-baldessari-teaching-a-plant-the-alphabet\/","title":{"rendered":"John Baldessari: Teaching a Plant the Alphabet"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"1342729147_2-Teaching-a-Plant-the-Alphabet-(Baldessari-1972)_600\"<\/p>\n

Leading Californian Conceptual artist John Baldessari is an American Collagist, Painter, and Photographer. He explores themes that question what art is and in the 1970’s, he abandoned painting to explore a diverse range of media. His work plays with humour and some of his later works are influenced by pop-art.<\/p>\n

Baldessari’s 1972 work, “Teaching a Plant the Alphabet”, has been described as an “exercise in futility. An absurdist lesson in cognition and recognition.” In this video, he holds up a piece of paper with a letter of the alphabet to a common house plant. He repeats the letter aggressively and quickly (A-A-A-A-A) and after a few seconds he moves on to the next sequential letter in the alphabet.<\/p>\n

This work may strike the viewer as illogical and foolish, but it\u00a0can be explored past banal themes and irony. Baldessari performed this piece as a reaction to Joseph Beuy’s 1965 performance “How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare”. Both performances cause the viewer to feel a visceral understanding of their work. The logical education task performed in an illogical way results in a greater experience for the viewer.<\/p>\n

\"1<\/p>\n

Source 1<\/a><\/p>\n

Source 2<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leading Californian Conceptual artist John Baldessari is an American Collagist, Painter, and Photographer. He explores themes that question what art is and in the 1970’s, he abandoned painting to explore a diverse range of media. His work plays with humour and some of his later works are influenced by pop-art. Baldessari’s 1972 work, “Teaching a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/experimentalstudio.ca\/outdoorschool\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2015\/12\/1-john-baldessari-teaching-a-plant-the-alphabet-video-web-1.jpg?fit=670%2C446&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7CROG-mh","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/experimentalstudio.ca\/outdoorschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/experimentalstudio.ca\/outdoorschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/experimentalstudio.ca\/outdoorschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/experimentalstudio.ca\/outdoorschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/experimentalstudio.ca\/outdoorschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1381"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/experimentalstudio.ca\/outdoorschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2437,"href":"https:\/\/experimentalstudio.ca\/outdoorschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1381\/revisions\/2437"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/experimentalstudio.ca\/outdoorschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/experimentalstudio.ca\/outdoorschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/experimentalstudio.ca\/outdoorschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/experimentalstudio.ca\/outdoorschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}