One of John Baldessari’s primary interests as a conceptual artist is to explore how images acquire meaning, and therefore to probe the boundaries of how we define art. In Teaching a Plant the Alphabet, the artist patiently gives an elementary lesson in the English alphabet to a potted banana plant. The absurdist exercise, with its futile, monotonous repetition and deadpan delivery, confronts our expectations of what art is supposed to look like. This video is also Baldessari’s response to the popularity of the academic disciplines of linguistics and semiotics that influenced many conceptual artists during the 1970s.
Watch This!: Revelations in Media Art, 2015
Watch This!: Revelations in Media Art, 2015
- Title
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Teaching a Plant the Alphabet
- Artist
- Date
- 1972
- Location
- Not on view
- Copyright
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© 1972 John Baldessari. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix, NY
- Credit Line
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Smithsonian American Art Museum
Museum purchase made possible by the Ford Motor Company
- Mediums
- Mediums Description
- single-channel video, black and white, sound; 18:40 minutes
- Classifications
- Keywords
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- Object – foliage
- Object Number
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2007.33.7
- Palette
- Linked Open Data
- Linked Open Data URI
