Black Dice
Artist
John Baldessari
(American, born 1931)
Date1982
Mediumportfolio of nine prints with drypoint, aquatint, soft ground sugarlift and photoetching
Dimensionsplate (each): 16.4 x 20.2 cm (6 7/16 x 7 15/16 in.)
sheet (each): 42.4 x 50.2 cm (16 11/16 x 19 3/4 in.)
sheet (each): 42.4 x 50.2 cm (16 11/16 x 19 3/4 in.)
ClassificationsPrints
Credit LineGift of Sidney Rose in memory of his parents Mary D. and Philip Rose
Object number1985.345
Label TextIn his appropriation of this film still of a bedroom scene from an English gangster film, Black Dice (1948), John Baldessari re-conceptualizes cinematic time and place as a composite of disjunctive yet related compositions and in doing so redirects our attention away from any master narrative to marginal details.
“While I cut the original image up two ways vertically and two ways horizontally into the nine parts, each section did seem like a separate composition, which was what I was trying to do. I wanted to retain part of the original movie still in each of the nine sections, so I just zeroed in on the most obvious things in each section—a lamp, telephone, or shoes, then isolated the object either by geometric devices, a circle, triangle, or square, or sometimes just by letting the subject dictate the frame.”
ProvenanceSidney Rose, Worcester, MAOn View
Not on view
