John Baldessari, Painted Ceramic Charger, Pasadena Art Alliance Edition, 1994, Edition of 50
John Baldessari turns a dinner plate into a conceptual proposition — figures, animals, and a floating red ball in his signature crosshatch palette, from an edition of fifty.
ARTIST: John Baldessari (American, 1931–2020)
PERIOD: 1994
CATEGORY: Decorative Object / Ceramics / Works on Paper
MATERIALS: Painted ceramic
DIMENSIONS: 13½ in. diameter
EDITION: Edition of 50. Stamped verso: Pasadena Art Alliance / John Baldessari / Edition of 50 / Gaetano America Inc. / 1994. Gaetano Pottery impressed mark to rim.
CONTEXT: The Pasadena Art Alliance has fostered the appreciation of contemporary visual art in Southern California since 1955, commissioning artists and supporting major institutions through benefit editions and grants. This charger was produced for the PAA's benefit program — a collaboration between Baldessari and Gaetano Pottery of California resulting in an edition of only 50 examples. By blending photography, painting, and text, Baldessari's work examines the plastic nature of artistic media while offering commentary on contemporary culture — his practice shaped the conceptual art landscape and influenced generations of artists through his long teaching career at CalArts and UCLA. The decoration is pure Baldessari: three figures rendered as colored crosshatch silhouettes — a black animal, a green figure mid-leap, a blue seated figure — orbit a floating red ball in an open-ended narrative the viewer completes. The ceramic format is a characteristically deadpan choice — functional object, conceptual proposition, collector's piece, all at once. Baldessari's work is held in the collections of MoMA, the Tate, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Guggenheim Museum, among others.