i was listening to 89.3 in the car yesterday while larry mantle was interviewing LA artist, john baldessari. lacma is currently hosting a retrospective of baldessari's work and he's quite the interesting fella. in the interview larry mantle asked mr. b about his "cremation project" and my ears perked up (not really sure why, they just did). anywhoodle, i've attempted to type out what mr. b reveals about his cremation project not only because it's fascinating--but it directly relates to organizing and letting go of possessions.
baldessari says the parameters of the cremation project were to burn everything he had in his possession (re; paintings) since he started painting. he goes on to say "i had no sentimentality attached to my paintings and i had a backlog of paintings and i figured if i went on with this for the rest of my life, that i would be suffocated by my own work. so somehow i had to be reductive and edit my work and i decided to reduce them to ashes. it's also amplified by the fact that one's work is a body of work, so they're synonymous. so i decided to have them cremated in a real crematorium."
larry mantle then asks do you have any regrets?
mr. b says that "it's necessary. i've never been possessive of my own work. it's more about the act of doing it. i have a memory of it, a photograph of it and that's all i need."
freaking brilliant (bneato).
--listen to the entire airtalk interview here (you'll have to fast forward to the middle).
image; seanbonner
No comments:
Post a Comment