THE PEDAGOGIC WALK

The mighty John Baldessari died recently, which was a great shame,  though he was 88.

He was not, in the current sense, a ‘walking artist’ but walking sometimes featured in his works, as in Walking Forward-Running Past, 1971(single-channel video, black and white, sound; 12:45 minutes). 

According to the New York Met, it’s a piece in which ‘John Baldessari examines the chronological relationship between still images and motion pictures. The artist constructs a purposefully crude moving image from still pictures of himself walking toward the camera, then running past it. By creating a video with still images, Baldessari urges viewers to question notions of sequence and cinematic time, and how we depict the past, present, and future.’  Well yes.

Another is A Movie: Directional Piece Where People Are Walking, 1972-1973; 22 black and white photographs with acrylic paint on them that looked like this when installed:

And there’s Walking the Plank, again acrylic on black and white photographs, 1988.

I can’t say that John Baldessari and I had much in common, though we did both teach at Cal Arts, in Valencia, an hour or so up the road from LA.  We taught at very different times and with very different results.  He was there 1970 to 1986:  I was there about 30 years after he left.  He was well loved.  I was not.

An article by Calvin Tomkins in the New Yorker described one of Baldessari’s artistic strategies. ‘They had a game, in which a student would throw a dart at a map of Los Angeles, and then they’d all go there and spend the day, taking pictures and Super-8 films or videos.’ 

I assume they drove to the place where the dart pierced the map, but walked when they got there.  I have also read, though can’t currently find the source, that Baldessari described this artistic practice as ‘fucking about.’ 

I think my time at Cal Arts would have been much more enjoyable if I’d done more fucking about. As it was I took things rather too seriously.  I did try to incorporate some walking into my pedagogic method, with limited success.

            However, given how things are these days in American colleges, with students who regard themselves as clients and consumers, determined to get their money’s worth, if you did too much fucking about you’d no doubt be fired. Probably best just to walk away.