Americans for the Arts mourns the loss of conceptual artist John Baldessari, who died at his home in Los Angeles on January 2, at age 88.

Baldessari served on Americans for the Arts’ Artists Committee, and in 2005 was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the National Arts Awards, presented to him by Jan Debbaut, who curated one of the first touring retrospective exhibitions of Baldessari's work in 1981. Baldessari was also the featured artist at the National Arts Awards in 2018, which showcased Two Suitcases (Blue)/Six Advocates (1990) and I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art (1973).

Baldessari’s prolific career spanned seven decades. Born on June 17, 1931, in National City, California, Baldessari showed interest in the arts as a young boy. His schoolteachers acknowledged his natural artistic abilities, often picking him to do murals and special projects. That recognition gave him the courage to pursue art, although his father worried it wasn’t a financially practical career. Baldessari received a master’s degree in art in 1957 from what is now San Diego State University and taught art classes in San Diego-area public schools for a decade before landing a position as an assistant professor of art at San Diego State. As one of the founding faculty members of the California Institute of the Arts and a member of the Fine Arts faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles, Baldessari served as a mentor for a multitude of artists, curators, and critics working today.

Initially a painter, Baldessari began to incorporate texts and photography into his canvases in the mid-1960s. In 1970 he began working in printmaking, film, video, installation, sculpture, and photography. He explored language and mass media culture in text-and-image paintings and photo compositions derived from film stills, magazines, and other sources. His work was widely celebrated as both thought-provoking and humorous – some of his most iconic works featured colorful dots pasted over subjects' faces in portraits and found photographs – and has been featured in more than 300 solo exhibitions and in more than 1,000 group exhibitions around the world. Baldessari continued to produce art until very recently. Between 2009 and 2011, a major retrospective of his work, "Pure Beauty," showed at a number of leading art institutions, including London's Tate Modern, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

In 2008, to encourage further awareness of the importance of the arts during the presidential election, Americans for the Arts Action Fund commissioned an original, limited-edition poster from Baldessari. The poster featured repeated images of ears, imploring voters and elected officials to: “Listen. Reflect. Choose. Vote.” The work was made available at the Democratic and Republican national conventions. At the time, Baldessari commented, “This poster serves as a call to action. The message is for both the voters and the politicians: take time to listen and reflect on the issues and make your voice heard this election year.”

Americans for the Arts President and CEO Robert L. Lynch commented, “The thing I loved most about John Baldessari was his unique sense of humor. He brought that to his art, to his life, and to his commentary in pretty much every situation he encountered. He could be sitting in the White House chuckling and amazed that he was indeed the Medal of Arts recipient, or making the message of our AFTA 2008 presidential campaign poster an image of an ear and a slogan about listening yet believing that was the last thing most candidates were doing, or delighting at the visual beauty of the arrival of a martini with two plump green olives at dinner. We will miss him.”

Among many awards and recognitions, Baldessari was the recipient of the 2014 National Medal of Arts by then president Barack Obama, memberships in the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the BACA International 2008, and the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement awarded by La Biennale di Venezia and the City of Goslar Kaiserring in 2012, among others.

Americans for the Arts is fortunate to have been associated with Baldessari, and is deeply saddened by his passing.