Was John Baldessari the 20th Century’s Most Important Art Professor?

January 9, 2020

Through his hybrid works and teaching—at the California Institute of the Arts from 1970 to 1988 and at UCLA's Department of Art, from 1996 to 2005—John Baldessari helped build the Los Angeles art scene. To survey Baldessari’s wide-ranging teaching practice—first at CalArts and later at the University of California, Los Angeles—ARTnews reached out to some of his students and asked about their memories and experiences with the artist as a professor.

"John Baldessari, who died last week at age 88, is best remembered as a Conceptualist who inspired countless artists to take up new modes of art-making, whether in the form of absurdist performances or photo-based works about pictures themselves. But one could say that Baldessari’s influence owes the most to a different but related part of his career: his teaching practice. Starting in the early 1970s, Baldessari became one of the first professors at the California Institute of Arts, a school in Santa Clarita that became a locus of artistic experimentation on the West Coast when the art scene there was perceived as less significant than New York’s. Baldessari, famously, taught a class whose name signified a lot: “Post-Studio Art.”

To survey Baldessari’s wide-ranging teaching practice—first at CalArts and later at the University of California, Los Angeles—ARTnews reached out to some of his students and asked about their memories and experiences with the artist as a professor.

James Welling
Graduated in 1974

John was a presence, a catalyst who brought a wide range of visitors to CalArts. I gained so much from them: William Wegman, Joan Jonas, Michael Asher. As an educator I learned from John that it is not the “teaching” or the “classroom” that is of primary importance to students—or at least to me. What is important is all the in-between moments that pass between teachers and students: the visitors he brought, his simple encouragement in the hallway or in the cafeteria. John had a non-stop interest in what everyone was doing.

Analia Saban
Graduated in 2005

At the UCLA graduate program, most of our classes were one-to-one with our professors. I was going through a tough time trying to figure out what I wanted to do during my studies. One of my professors went as far to say that I wasn’t “graduate material.” A couple days later, on my next meeting with John, he told me that he understood my struggle. “You’re just ambitious.” I was trying to do projects that were too big and kept failing, and he helped me break them down into smaller projects. He would just watch and encourage. He was never dogmatic. Instead of trying to teach you to become a young version of himself, he looked at every student individually and brought out the best in us, always with mutual respect. “There are no students, only young artists” was his motto. His support was instrumental to gain confidence and change the course of my career.

Art was never defined. He always reminded me that as artists we could do whatever we wanted or whatever we could get away with!"— Alex Greenberger, Jan. 9, 2020

This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the ARTnews website.
Read more about John Baldessari.

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