Finally, A Hilarious Documentary About Conceptual Artist John Baldessari Narrated By Tom Waits

A Brief History of John Baldessari from Supermarché: Henry & Rel on Vimeo.

“This is John Baldessari’s pencil. This is John Baldessari’s chair. This is what John Baldessari sees when he sits at his desk. This is a film about John Baldessari.” So says Tom Waits in his familiar drawl in the opening to this documentary about, yep, John Baldessari. Directed by Creators Supermarché—Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman—who previously took a tale of Facebook duplicity and turned it into box office success with Catfish.

The godfather of conceptual art—who once filmed himself writing the line “I will not make any more boring art” again and again until the tape ran out—is the subject for their latest short doc and, let’s be honest, with Tom Waits narrating it was always going to be good.

As it stands, it’s original and funny, condensing Baldessari’s artistic life into a cut-and-thrust, snappily edited six minutes. And in this six minutes we’re given incredible insights like the fact the towering artist’s studio door has two peep holes, one regular height, one John Baldessari height. And we also learn that his beard is “Pretty much the same color as my hair.” Heck, we even find out his Wi-Fi password. It’s magical stuff.

And to learn more about Supermarché, watch our video on them below:

[via Vimeo]

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