John Baldessari
Minerva (With Old and New Truths)

Minerva (With Old and New Truths)

© John Baldessari

Minerva (With Old and New Truths)
Minerva (With Old and New Truths)
ArtistAmerican, 1931–2020
CultureAmerican
Titles
  • Minerva (With Old and New Truths)
Date1987
PlaceUnited States
MediumGelatin silver prints with applied color
DimensionsOverall: 92 1/2 × 48 1/2 in. (235 × 123.2 cm)
Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by the Agnes Cullen Arnold Endowment Fund
Object number89.116
Non exposé

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Department
Photography
Object Type
Description

Minerva (With Old and New Truths) is a photographic collage composed of eight
fragmented images, taken from various preexisting sources (films and
photographs) and arranged vertically in the three panels. The title is taken
from a sentence of Hegel’s, “Minerva’s owl begins its flight only in the
gathering dusk.” It refers to the crystallization of Greek culture that accompanied
major classical literature and art in the period that saw the fall of the
previous Grecian civilization. 

 




Together with his other complex photo-collages
of the 1980s, this work seems like a long meditation on Roland Barthes’s
statement from his 1966 essay “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of
Narratives,” “the narratives of the world are numberless…Must we conclude from
this universality that narrative is insignificant?” In this work of enigmatic
juxtaposition, Baldessari is neither willing to pin down any explicit narrative
nor to exclude alternative readings of its significance. Here, Baldesssari
seems to suggests a dialectic of “ability to see” and “inability to see” in the
arranged images.


ProvenanceSonnabend Gallery; MFAH, July 1989.
Exhibition History"Photographic Masterworks: Recent Acquisitions from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston," Glassell School, January 23–March 4, 1990

"Contemporary Art and Photography: Spotlight on the Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Upper Brown Pavilion, September 30, 2001–February 3, 2002.

"Ruptures and Continuities: Photography Made after 1960 from the MFAH Collection," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Brown Foundation Galleries, February 21–May 9, 2010.

"A History of Photography" (Rotation #2), Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Lower Beck Corridor, May 1, 2015–June 21, 2015.

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

If you have questions about this work of art or the MFAH Online Collection please contact us.

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