Life's Balance (with Money)
Primary
John Baldessari
(National City, California, 1931–Los Angeles, California, 2020)
Printer
Branstead Studio
NationalityAmerican, North America
Date1989-1990
MediumPhotogravure with color aquatint
DimensionsSheet: 42 3/4 × 51 1/16 in. (108.6 × 129.7 cm)
Image: 49 × 40 5/8 in. (124.4 × 103.2 cm)
Image: 49 × 40 5/8 in. (124.4 × 103.2 cm)
Credit LineBlanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Archer M. Huntington Museum Fund, 1992.305
Keywords
Rights Statement
Collection AreaPrints and Drawings
Object number1992.305
On View
Not on viewJohn Baldessari obtains imagery directly from television and film. In Life's Balance, he uses media imagery to lure the viewer into the work and then forces him to participate in constructing a new meaning. By using film stills that have been fragmented and dislocated from their original narrative context, this meaning remains unstable, and the viewer's ambitions are complicated.
Exhibitions
![Le Politicard [The Politician] from Réincarnations du Père Ubu](/internal/media/dispatcher/20391/thumbnail)
![Nu [Nude], from Réincarnations du Père Ubu](/internal/media/dispatcher/20393/thumbnail)
![Untitled, from Les Fleurs du mal [The Flowers of Evil]](/internal/media/dispatcher/20388/thumbnail)
![De profundis... [Out of the Depths...], plate 47 from Miserere](/internal/media/dispatcher/20407/thumbnail)
![Vierge aux sept glaives [Virgin of Seven Swords], plate 53 from Miserere](/internal/media/dispatcher/20395/thumbnail)