John Baldessari

Raised Eyebrows/ Furrowed Foreheads: Two Foreheads (one Green)

3 runs offset lithograph and 7 runs serigraph on 270 g Somerset Satin
Edition of 30 + 10 APs
Paper format 78 × 70 cm
Print format 65 × 60 cm
Printed by Mike Karstens, Münster, Germany
Published by Freunde der Kunstmuseen Krefeld e.V.
4,900 Euros (unframed, incl. 19% VAT)

2009

“I am interested”, as Baldessari says, “in what occurs when two images collide. It is much as when two words collide and a new word with some kind of new meaning arises. And I work my way back and forth on that.” The ten-colour art print which has been done specially for the exhibition in Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, is a prize example of Baldessari's witty and ingenious ars combinatoria. By freeing the individual elements of the human body from one another - such as the ears, nose, arms, legs, elbows or, as here, the eyebrows and forehead - the artist highlights human gestures, attitudes and frames of mind. To this end, the present print depicts a man's furrowed forehead vis-à-vis a woman's smooth brow, such that the opposition between beauty and ugliness descends like a portent on the latter and begins to fuse with it - in an amalgam that reminds us every bit as much of horror films as René Magritte. Through the powerful use of colour, the eye-brows simultaneously point to the struggle against the ineluctable force of aging