- Astronauts and Businessmen
Mount: 72 5/16 × 45 5/8 in. (183.6 × 115.9 cm)
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John Baldessari is best known for his juxtapositions of found photographs or film stills, removing them from their original context to expose the myriad ways in which photographic images can be organized and understood.
Baldessari made this collage just after the United States launched Discovery, the first manned space mission since the Challenger disaster in 1986. In the upper half, three astronauts stride confidently out of a space vehicle, having just completed a mission. The lower half features a group portrait of nine businessmen. Obscuring the figures’ faces with circles—primary-colored for the astronauts, black for the businessmen—Baldessari erases their individuality and underscores the direct link between the space program and the economic prosperity of the 1980s.
ProvenancePaceMacGill Gallery; Manfred Heiting; MFAH, 2002.
Exhibition History"Contemporary Photos from the Manfred Heiting Collection," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, May 17–August 10, 2003.
"Contemporary Photography from the Collection of the MFAH," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, August 15, 2003–January 4, 2004.
"Los Angeles," The Annenberg Space for Photography, Los Angeles, March 25–July 5, 2009.
"Utopia/ Dystopia: Construction and Destruction in Photography and Collage," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, March 11–June 10, 2012.
"Shooting the Moon: Photographs from the Museum's Collection 50 Years after Apollo 11," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, July 20–September 2, 2019.
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