Why Was the Late Artist John Baldessari So Important? Just Watch This Video Narrated by Tom Waits

John Baldessari, the wry
conceptualist who died this
weekend at age 88,
meant a lot of things to a lot of people. But of the many Baldessari-heads out there,
there’s at least one you might not expect: Tom
Waits. 

It turns out that the croaky
crooner grew up in the same town as Baldessari—National City,
California—and was a big fan of the artist. And the respect may
have been mutual. In 2012, upon Baldessari’s request, Waits
narrated a short documentary about the artist titled “A
Brief History of John
Baldessari.” (Baldessari says he chose Waits because of his
voice.) 

The documentary, every bit as
quirky as you might expect a video featuring two of the 20th
century’s most idiosyncratic voices to be, has been making the
rounds on social media in the days since Baldessari’s death. If you
haven’t seen it yet, it deserves a look. Though it’s only 6 minutes
long and fails in its stated goal of telling the artist’s life
story, it does capture the sense of humor, humility, and pathos
that pervaded just about everything he did.

The short film was commissioned
by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2012 on the occasion of
its first annual “Art + Film Gala,” which honored both Baldessari
and Clint Eastwood. (The museum was one of four institutions to
host Baldessari’s sprawling 2009 exhibition “Pure
Beauty.”) It was filmed
and directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, the brotherly
tandem behind the 2010 documentary Catfish and the
movies Paranormal
Activity 3 and
4. 

Interspersed with archival
footage and clips of Baldessari himself speaking in his studio, the
video features the artist reflecting on his legacy (he thinks he’ll
best be remembered as the “guy who put dots over people’s faces”),
revealing the x-factor behind his famous beard (“It’s pretty much
the same color as my hair”), and sharing the three things that he
believes every young artist should know. 

See the full documentary
below. 

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Important? Just Watch This Video Narrated by Tom Waits appeared
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