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Man with Nails/Car/Reluctant Man

Artist/Maker (American, 1931–2020)
Date1984
MediumBlack and white photographs
DimensionsOverall: 20 × 106 1/2 in. (50.8 × 270.5 cm)
Frame: 20 1/4 × 106 3/4 × 1 3/8 in. (51.4 × 271.1 × 3.5 cm)
Credit LineR. T. Miller Jr. Fund
Object number1984.40
Status
Not on view
Copyright© John BaldessariMore Information
John Baldessari taught for many years at CalArts, counting among his students Barbara Bloom, David Salle, Jack Goldstein, and James Welling. He pioneered “post studio” art, encouraging students to break from handmade, original artwork, and to embrace found images. One of his pithy class assignments directed students to, “Photograph backs of things, underneaths of things, extreme foreshortenings, uncharacteristic views,” while another dictated, “One person copies or makes-up random captions. Another person takes photos. Match photos to captions.”

Baldessari’s own work influenced the Pictures artists. Man with Nails / Car / Reluctant Man joins three unrelated photographs, “subvert[ing] analytic thought,” in the words of Douglas Crimp, but also prompting irrational or imaginative thinking. Baldessari himself described it thus: “Somehow this is an imminent crucifixion—at the left, the crucifier; at the right, he who is to be crucified. In the middle, a gigantic technological phallus with a transposable name, Goldenrod. Sexuality in the modern life as nearly insurmountable.”
Exhibition History
Subjects of Desire: Issues in Contemporary Photography
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (January 7, 1997 - March 9, 1997 )
Framed and Shot: Photographs from the Allen Memorial Art Museum
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (March 1, 2000 - May 30, 2000 )
Modern Art in America: 20th-Century Works on Paper from the Allen Memorial Art Museum
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (November 15, 2003 - September 2, 2004 )
Modern and Contemporary Art
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (July 22, 2008 - September 13, 2008 )
Barbara Bloom in Context: Works from the Pictures Generation
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (July 11, 2018 - December 23, 2018 )
Bakunin's Barricade: Ahmet Öğüt
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (July 16, 2022 - December 23, 2022 )
Collections
  • Modern & Contemporary