.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
An early, foundational exemplar of Conceptualism, John Baldessari’s Commissioned Painting: A Painting by Edgar Transue radically reinterprets the act of painting, emphasizing the idea over the object. Emerging from one of the most celebrated series in the annals of Conceptual Art, the present work was included in Baldessari’s seminal travelling retrospective of 1990-1992. Created on the precipice of Conceptualism’s emergence, in the same year as the influential Art-Language: The Journal of Conceptual Art was first published, Commissioned Painting: A Painting by Edgar Transue rejects painting’s lofty self-perception, shattering any notion of what fine art could be. As Baldessari recalls, “so much of my thinking at that time was trying to figure out just what I thought art was, you know—choosing this against that, and so on. And I think, yeah, I decided you either believed it was art or you didn’t. That’s what made it art” (J. Baldessari, quoted in C. van Bruggen, John Baldessari, exh. cat., Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1990, p. 47).
Baldessari conceived of this new body of work in the summer of 1969, amid a trip through the north of California with his friend George Nicolaidis completing his California Map Project. The impetus emerged from an apocryphal statement from the Abstract Expressionist artist Al Held snubbing the emerging art movement: “all conceptual art is just pointing at things” (A. Held, quoted in F. Richard, “John Baldessari,” Artforum, vol. 37., no. 8, April 1999, p. 171). Seeking to circumvent the orthodox painterly processes, he cleverly devised his Commissioned Paintings so as to have an ambiguous role in their making, emphasizing the process over the resultant canvas. Taking Held’s remark literally, he parodied his criticism by shooting 35 mm photographs of Nicolaidis pointing at fourteen mundane subjects—in the present case, a pile of banal prescription pills against a white backdrop. He then commissioned local amateur painters found at county art fairs to recreate these images in a photorealistic style on canvas. Baldessari finally added the final touch, painting the formulaic captions below each image, which serve as artifacts of the conceptual process, memorializing each amateur artist’s participation in the piece while simultaneously highlighting the procedural complexity of the work.
Baldessari acted as a choreographer or composer, directing each player in the process which offers a compendium of Conceptualism. The series breaks down the conceptual process step by step, starting with ideation, then flowing into the sensibility of deciding the subject, then the photographer who frames the composition, then the painter who renders the image, then a second painter who titles, all ending with Baldessari, who declares the process art. With Commissioned Painting: A Painting by Edgar Transue, Baldessari offers a new art historical paradigm, obliterating notions of connoisseurship, authorship, and originality, parodying the notion of “high” art whilst advancing a novel notion of interpretation.
The Commissioned Painting series was the culmination of a decade of artistic development for the artist. The rise of Pop and Conceptual art in the 1960s led to proclamations of the death of painting, prompting Baldessari to incinerate the vast majority of his paintings produced before 1966 in a mortuary. He then proceeded to adapt an entirely new artistic intent, concentrating on capturing the gestures of creative conception, delegation, and examination. Opposing the typical impenetrability exhibited by many of his Conceptualist colleagues, Baldessari’s work offers his Conceptualist vision with astounding clarity.
The subversive nature of the Commissioned Paintings recalls Surrealist precedents, most importantly René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images (1929, Los Angeles County Museum of Art), whose famous text, “this is not a pipe,” similarly dismantles the conventional conception of painting as illusory. These works also act as a precursor to Francis Alÿs’ celebrated Sign Painting Project of the 1990s, another meditation on the misattributed role of the painter as a solitary creative genius. The series is the inaugural body of work in Baldessari’s massively influential genre of text paintings. At once revelatory and revolutionary, the present work accentuates the critic Peter Schjeldahl’s exposition of Baldessari’s seismic importance: “On the one hand, there is great art, which fills the ambitious soul with longing. On the other hand, there is one's tatty, funky self. Like a hobo Cynic in the agora, dissecting people's comfortable self-deceptions, Baldessari won't let either horn of the permanent dilemma recede from sight for a second. Paying attention to his work won't make you better or happier, but it will remind you what truth tastes like.” (Peter Schjeldahl, “Wonderful Cynicism: John Baldessari,” Artnet Magazine, 5 February 1998, online, accessed 15 October 2025).
Baldessari conceived of this new body of work in the summer of 1969, amid a trip through the north of California with his friend George Nicolaidis completing his California Map Project. The impetus emerged from an apocryphal statement from the Abstract Expressionist artist Al Held snubbing the emerging art movement: “all conceptual art is just pointing at things” (A. Held, quoted in F. Richard, “John Baldessari,” Artforum, vol. 37., no. 8, April 1999, p. 171). Seeking to circumvent the orthodox painterly processes, he cleverly devised his Commissioned Paintings so as to have an ambiguous role in their making, emphasizing the process over the resultant canvas. Taking Held’s remark literally, he parodied his criticism by shooting 35 mm photographs of Nicolaidis pointing at fourteen mundane subjects—in the present case, a pile of banal prescription pills against a white backdrop. He then commissioned local amateur painters found at county art fairs to recreate these images in a photorealistic style on canvas. Baldessari finally added the final touch, painting the formulaic captions below each image, which serve as artifacts of the conceptual process, memorializing each amateur artist’s participation in the piece while simultaneously highlighting the procedural complexity of the work.
Baldessari acted as a choreographer or composer, directing each player in the process which offers a compendium of Conceptualism. The series breaks down the conceptual process step by step, starting with ideation, then flowing into the sensibility of deciding the subject, then the photographer who frames the composition, then the painter who renders the image, then a second painter who titles, all ending with Baldessari, who declares the process art. With Commissioned Painting: A Painting by Edgar Transue, Baldessari offers a new art historical paradigm, obliterating notions of connoisseurship, authorship, and originality, parodying the notion of “high” art whilst advancing a novel notion of interpretation.
The Commissioned Painting series was the culmination of a decade of artistic development for the artist. The rise of Pop and Conceptual art in the 1960s led to proclamations of the death of painting, prompting Baldessari to incinerate the vast majority of his paintings produced before 1966 in a mortuary. He then proceeded to adapt an entirely new artistic intent, concentrating on capturing the gestures of creative conception, delegation, and examination. Opposing the typical impenetrability exhibited by many of his Conceptualist colleagues, Baldessari’s work offers his Conceptualist vision with astounding clarity.
The subversive nature of the Commissioned Paintings recalls Surrealist precedents, most importantly René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images (1929, Los Angeles County Museum of Art), whose famous text, “this is not a pipe,” similarly dismantles the conventional conception of painting as illusory. These works also act as a precursor to Francis Alÿs’ celebrated Sign Painting Project of the 1990s, another meditation on the misattributed role of the painter as a solitary creative genius. The series is the inaugural body of work in Baldessari’s massively influential genre of text paintings. At once revelatory and revolutionary, the present work accentuates the critic Peter Schjeldahl’s exposition of Baldessari’s seismic importance: “On the one hand, there is great art, which fills the ambitious soul with longing. On the other hand, there is one's tatty, funky self. Like a hobo Cynic in the agora, dissecting people's comfortable self-deceptions, Baldessari won't let either horn of the permanent dilemma recede from sight for a second. Paying attention to his work won't make you better or happier, but it will remind you what truth tastes like.” (Peter Schjeldahl, “Wonderful Cynicism: John Baldessari,” Artnet Magazine, 5 February 1998, online, accessed 15 October 2025).