1 Art and Teaching
There’s a great connection between teaching and art because they’re both about effectively communicating and making contact. It’s not just saying something, hoping or assuming it’s going to be absorbed. You don’t know. It’s just getting the idea across—being accessible to the most astute audience or student, and not being esoteric or opaque to the less informed. (Stich, 2005, p. 78)
one will loop back on through the other, that my art would be sort of an example or illustrative or a metaphor, for what things I was dealing with in class. And I was going at my class much like I would do art, which was basically trying to be as formed as possible, but open to chance. (Knight, 1992, p. 28)
Baldessari enjoyed teaching but saw it primarily as a way to have financial stability as an artist, as was normal practice in his generation. He also discussed in several interviews the need to make teaching fun for himself, and to save his sanity in a teaching environment he decided: “I’m going to have to make teaching like art. Or somehow a form of art” (Baldessari & Craig-Martin, 2009, p. 48).
2 The Origins of Post-Studio Art
Hired as part of the founding faculty at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), John Baldessari was initially meant to teach painting. However, just before the school opened its doors in 1970, he notoriously cremated all his paintings made between 1953 and 1966 and even used the ash in a batch of inedible cookies as a way to symbolically digest and recycle the art. His Cremation Project can be seen as a grand gesture to escape the idea that a
Baldessari wanted to eliminate the traditional definitions of art and the tendency in the profession to label an artist by the medium they work in, like “painter” or “sculptor.” These ideas of emancipation influenced the direction he took as an educator and his vision for the CalArts course he invented and dubbed Post-Studio Art. He explained, “I wanted the students to have a space where they could do something other than painting or making objects. I tried to make room for something new; they didn’t necessarily have to make things by hand” (Hertz, 2003, p. 82). In addition, CalArts’s initial policy of not requiring grades or a curriculum left the door open for Baldessari to mold the course the way he saw fit.
Any boundaries left between Baldessari’s teaching and artistic practices almost fully disappeared when he began teaching at CalArts. He wanted to create a class that was in tune with his current interests and direction as an artist. He did not want to title the class “Conceptual Art” because he thought it would be too limiting and perhaps exclude students who worked with certain materials. He titled it Post-Studio Art not knowing what that would come to mean, but he knew it was not painting (Christie’s, 2014, 0:03:14). The phrasing of the title can be partially credited to Carl Andre, who first began using the term “post-studio artist” to describe himself and other artists making similar work. The course encompassed every student working in a generally non-traditional manner, or in other words, according to former student Jack Goldstein, it was “the catchall for everything outside of painting” (Hertz, 2003, p. 67).
It’s about getting together a group of core people who might be exciting to young artists, so they might want to find out what’s afoot. And then you
put all that stuff in the pot and see what comes out, and you have no idea what’s going to. (Baldessari & Craig-Martin, 2009, p. 52)
One thing I try to do a lot with students is to keep them off balance, also imparting an attitude that I have of simply being skeptical, of being perverse, not believing everything I read and so on. (Roth, 2005, paras. 2, 95)
The idea of analyzing work critically and being skeptical of accepted practices in order to become innovators instead of repeaters was key to Baldessari’s approach to teaching.
3 Teaching Methods
John Baldessari felt that to be an artist one needs to possess a certain level of obsession and therefore there is no specific thing to teach an artist because students need to pursue their own motivations and interests. Consequently, Baldessari developed educational methods that were well outside direct instruction and instead included individual mentorship, peer learning, and contact with contemporary artists. Baldessari sought to create a dialogue with and between students, rather than teaching specific information, and led by example. He expressed, “I’ve always been kind of painfully aware that when I’m teaching, I’m not. And when I don’t think I’m teaching, I am. Students are watching you. You’re teaching all the time, when you don’t know it” (Baldessari & Craig-Martin, 2009, p. 49). The dialogues he prompted, typically during group or individual critiques of student work, used probing inquiry to get students to articulate their intentions and artistic choices. Former student Meg Cranston recalled, “He was interested in the internal logic of the work. […] It was always a line of questioning, like a therapist, never suggesting what you should do but asking a lot of questions” (Finkel, 2010, para. 9).
The strong belief that art could not be taught was articulated by Baldessari repeatedly in interviews as the notion was the root of his pedagogical approach. He would often say things like: “while I didn’t think you could teach art, you could supply information” and “I don’t think you can teach art; but you can
3.1 Developing Connections in the Art World
Baldessari arranged for a plethora of visiting artists to come to CalArts and knew the benefits as he created similar initiatives at the schools he taught at before CalArts. He acknowledged that there was often an enigmatic mysticism that surrounded the concept of an artist, and he wanted to remove the mystery and show his students that artists face similar problems to their own. Former student Stephen Prina recalled that he would actively try to find young artists in the early, formative stages of their careers so the students could relate to them.2 Jack Goldstein expressed, “The artists Baldessari brought out really expanded the information available to us” (Hertz, 2003, p. 68). The more Baldessari exhibited and traveled the more contacts he formed in the art world, and “tried to make CalArts kind of a watering hole for them” (Stich, 2005, p. 79). He also described himself as being the “Cupid between the art world and CalArts” (Knight, 1992, p. 27).
The artists Baldessari invited to CalArts worked primarily in New York City or European cities—where his own work was more accepted at the time—because he wanted to counteract the “L.A. aesthetic” he felt was present at the school. He explained, “The idea was to create a program which would transcend the local art situation” (Hertz, 2003, p. 75). Some artists dropped in while passing through California and others stayed for a whole term such as Vito Acconci, Yvonne Rainer, Richard Artschwager, and Laurie Anderson. Other guests invited in from New York—with the occasional artist stationed in California—included Sol LeWitt, Lawrence Weiner, Robert Smithson, Daniel Buren, Dan Graham, Joseph Kosuth, Hans Haacke, Richard Serra, Joan Jonas, Nancy Chunn, Paul McMahon, and Allen Ruppersberg. However, Sol LeWitt was such a non-believer in art education that he had CalArts students meet him at a nearby bar instead of on the school grounds—which was not uncommon for Baldessari’s visitors (Hammer Museum, 2011, 1:02:48). European artists included Ulrike Rosenbach and Rebecca Horn. Former student Barbara Bloom recalled Gilbert & George’s visit being particularly memorable shortly after they began performing their groundbreaking Singing Sculpture (1969).3
Baldessari felt strongly that artists learned from other artists, and because he viewed his students as already being artists, he also encouraged peer learning. Former student Matt Mullican commented that he understands that several factors were essential to his CalArts education but proclaims that the most important part was learning from his peers.4 Baldessari also acknowledged
3.2 Reading Material
In order to keep up with the most recent developments in the field, Baldessari made a ritual of reading about art and going to exhibitions. For learning and inspirational material, he would collect and supply his students with a vast array of print media from his travels to New York or Europe. Many of his students recalled him returning from trips with a suitcase full of exhibition catalogs that the students would eagerly devour. He would present the information without placing judgment or opinion on what was worthy of considering or investigating further and simply highlighted art that was challenging conventions. He would also present media that was seemingly unrelated to art. Jack Goldstein recalled, “John would have magazines on the floor open to the ads, to the news photos. He was saying, Here, all of this stuff you can use in your art. I don’t remember any other instructor who ever treated art that way, so tongue-in-cheek” (Hertz, 2003, p. 68).
Meg Cranston noted that Baldessari was one of the best-read people she had ever known. Reading was an integral part of his artistic process and something he wanted to instill a fondness for in his students. Cranston recalled that CalArts had built up an excellent library, and “a big part of our education was just hanging out in the library and looking at books and magazines” which also helped keep students up to date with what was going on in the art world.5 She noted that Artforum was a common publication in circulation around the art office. As a great pursuer of information, Baldessari also took advantage of the access to books in the CalArts library to inform his work. He read to gather information to produce his art, not to sound posh or pretentious when speaking about art. Cranston recalled, “he said, I never use ‘edifice’ when ‘building’ will do,” because he appreciated simplicity in texts and ideas, and even some theorists frustrated him because they overcomplicated their language and communication of ideas.
4 Art Practice and the Educational Institution
John Baldessari’s desire to communicate simply and his scrutiny of published art material feature explicitly in his work even prior to teaching at CalArts. His text-based works from the latter part of the 1960s (work that remained uncremated) included formulaic instructions from “how-to” art books, and he used
One of Baldessari’s most notable text works is WRONG (1967), which he made after looking at a “how-to” book on photography. In the piece, Baldessari used himself as the subject of a photograph while standing directly under an extremely tall palm tree, as if it were growing from the top of his head, demonstrating what would normally be judged as bad composition. He then hired a sign painter to carefully put the word “WRONG” under the photo that was printed onto a canvas. The piece used the materials of art while at the same time poking fun at art. It playfully exhibits an authoritative, rules-based approach to education; the “wrong” can then be applied to both the composition and the approach to teaching artists. Jack Goldstein recalled, “His work always seemed very didactic; there was always something to ‘get’ in his work” (Hertz, 2013, p. 68).
I guess what videotapes allow me to do is to work in time, which I enjoy, because I’ve always been interested in movies and in music. It’s always bothered me going to museums and seeing things on the wall—one, two, three—and I always wonder what happens in the space between two paintings. (Roth, 2005, para. 74)
He goes on in the interview to describe two exercises he would assign his painting students when he was younger. In one task students had to reproduce a painting like a Van Gogh and then extend it by six feet to capture what else Van Gogh might have viewed beyond the edges of the painting, and the other was placing two different paintings, like a Picasso and Matisse, close together and extend them towards one another until they merge (Roth, 2005, para. 74).
Many of Baldessari’s video works made intentionally unsubtle references to education and often used pointless repetition and parody to make their point.
John Baldessari, Wrong, 1966–1968. Photographic emulsion and acrylic on canvas, 149.9 × 114.3 cm. © 2025 Estate of John Baldessari. Courtesy of the John Baldessari Family Foundation and Sprüth Magers
One of Baldessari’s most famous video pieces which was made and viewed in his CalArts classroom was Teaching a Plant the Alphabet (1972).
John Baldessari, Teaching a Plant the Alphabet, 1972. Black-and-white video, sound, 18:40 min. © 2025 Estate of John Baldessari. Courtesy of the John Baldessari Family Foundation and Sprüth Magers
A photographic piece that was made with CalArts students was titled Portrait: Various Identities Hidden with Name/Date Cards (4 MR. 74) (1974). Six photographs were taken of students, a white sheet of paper covering their faces with their first name and the date written on it. Then another set of six photographs were taken of Baldessari with his face covered by the same papers, inaccurately labeling him and giving him six new identities. An additional version of this piece was made a month later presenting ten photos of his students that all have “John” written on the paper in front of their faces and “8 AP. 74” for the date. In these photographic series, both teacher and student have shared, interchangeable identities, reminiscent of Baldessari’s views on eliminating hierarchy in educational settings. These works were also perhaps the beginnings of Baldessari’s later obsession with hiding identities and portraying anonymity through obscuring faces using colorful dots in his collage works that began in the mid-1980s.
4.1 109 Assignments
For the first Post-Studio Art class group of 1970, Baldessari created a list of one hundred and nine “assignments” that students could use if they were short of ideas, which he kept on hand for many years. Stemming from his well-known enjoyment of list-making, the assignments were thought-provoking suggestions for potential works, or at least starting points for ideas for works. Now published in several locations, the list promoted the use of all types of media including drawing, sculpture, photography, video, and performance, but centered on highly conceptual and imaginative ideas. Meg Cranston recalls that Baldessari detested giving assignments, as he wanted to teach without prescribing, and so it was not a good sign if he gave a student this list because “basically that’s John giving you the answer, the idea is the answer”. Although intended for students, several of Baldessari’s own video pieces come directly from this list including Folding Hat (part of number forty-seven on the list), Police Drawing (number eight), and I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art
In the Folding Hat video, the person folding the hat and whistling was a CalArts student. The idea was derived from a comment a friend had made to Baldessari about how in his high school years students would fold their hats to create codes that could be understood by other students who knew the system (Cranston & Obrist, 2013, p. 114). The piece’s corresponding statement attests to Baldessari’s interest in using time in his work as well as the Conceptual art cornerstone of impermanency: “The act of endlessly folding a hat and whistling is presented as passing time, as a series of signals, and as ephemeral sculpture” (Cranston & Obrist, 2013, p. 115).
Police Drawing was the video documentation of a performance called “Police Drawing Project.” During the performance, Baldessari entered his friend’s art class in San Diego for about fifteen minutes, set up a drawing board, lights, and a video camera, then left. Later, a real police sketch artist entered and asked the drawing students to describe Baldessari’s likeness, none of whom had ever met him before the event. The drawing turned out to be accurate enough so that if he were in fact a criminal he would likely have been caught (Cranston & Obrist, 2013, p. 129). Comparably, in an artist talk given at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) in 1973, Douglas Huebler described a similar activity where he asked an outsider to attend his lecture during an advanced drawing class at the University of South Carolina (Kennedy, 2012, p. 214). After the intruder made a disturbance and quick exit from the classroom, each student had to then draw him. Both the Baldessari and Huebler versions of the activity created a mixture of Conceptual art blended with the long-standing tradition of drawing portraits in an art classroom.
I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art became a series of different installments in 1971. The origin of the idea stemmed from Baldessari’s “dissatisfaction with the fallout of Minimalism” (Cranston & Obrist, 2013, p. 142). However, on the original assignment list and in his writings, he labeled it a “punishment piece” as it was similar to a reprimand given to a naughty school child, yet here the punishment was intended to be self-imposed. One version of the idea was simply a video of Baldessari repeatedly writing the title’s phase in a notebook until the tape ran out in the camera. It was a mix of commentary on contemporary art, teaching, and a reflection on his art practice where his interest in using language led him to discover how language could easily fall into something overly academic and in turn create boring art (Stich, 2005, p. 80).
Another version of I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art became the entire premise for a Baldessari exhibition at NSCAD’s Mezzanine Gallery. Due to the school lacking the funds to fly him there, Baldessari came up with an
In conclusion, Baldessari’s overlapping ideas about art making and art learning are evident in his art practice and teaching. He used an experimental and light-hearted approach in both and was able to achieve a generative harmony between his dual careers. He employed simple ways of communicating and sought to reveal the mysteries of what artists do, while still questioning the very definition of art. He incorporated an intentional element of didacticism in many works which served as a critique of the ways artists are educated. His use of parody and satire in video pieces like I am Making Art and I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art gave his students a type of ultimate permission to experiment, question, and push the boundaries of art. Overall, Baldessari merged contemporary avant-garde practices with the classroom in ways that left a lasting impression on art education.
Acknowledgement
This chapter draws on research conducted for the author’s doctoral dissertation, Art, Life, and Education: The Avant-Garde Artist in the Classroom (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, 2022).
Notes
Post-Studio Art course description in CalArts’s “schedule of classes” from Term 1, 1972, on display at the Where Art Might Happen: The Early Years of CalArts exhibition, Kunsthaus Graz, Austria, July 1–September 20, 2020. Personal observation, July 2, 2020.
Barbara Bloom (CalArts student, 1970–1972), interviewed by author on February 4, 2021.
Matt Mullican (CalArts student, 1971–1974), interviewed by author on January 14, 2021.
Meg Cranston (CalArts student, 1984–1986), interviewed by author on February 11, 2021. All quotes attributed to Meg Cranston without a parenthetical citation come from the interview conducted by the author.
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