"What the hell did the critic think of the show?"

The San Diego Union-Tribune • Sunday, May 25. 2003

A man of ideas
Baldwin's wry humor would have made Twain smile

By Robert L. Pincus
ART CRITIC

Call it a credo, a motto or a saying. Russell Baldwin has one: "Art is all over." It speaks to his feeling that any arena of life offers possibilities for art, from a small, absurd detail to a dauntingly large social dilemma. And if the eye and mind are inventive, as Baldwin's are, then the world is such a place.

Yet if his name or his chosen phrase don't sound familiar, even to many who frequent museums or galleries, that's not surprising. It's been two decades since Baldwin — who acquired a considerable reputation in the '60s and '70s — had an exhibition. The last one was at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art in 1981 (now the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego). His work is in many public collections, including those of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Orange County Museum of Art.

Several things took him away from art full-time teaching, the death Of his son from leukemia, and a passion for restoring formula cars and racing them.

"For several years, it was enough for me to write down the ideas for my work," Baldwin says, who then lets loose one of his typical belly laughs. The title of the show at the Earl & Birdie Taylor Library in Pacific Beach is "The Last Picture Show?" He intends it to be wry and keenly serious at once. (The exhibition continues through June 5.)

Wryness is a recurring element in his work. In one selection it can take a straightforwardly amusing form, as in a meticulously made little wall. panel in black, to which he has attached a tag whose words just might sound familiar: "This tag is not to be removed under penalty of law."

Many of his wall-mounted. constructions, part picture and part sculpture, are wry and serious at once. One of these characteristically complex works, "You, Too, Should Have a Cayman Island Address," features the artist as acidic satirist. Right in the middle of the construction is a pair of sculptural ice cream cones. One contains two gilded scoops of ice cream. The other is empty. Their caption reads: "Oops! I dropped yours!"

Stanley Tools was the inspiration. For the purpose of avoiding federal taxes, the company was attempting to relocate its headquarters, at least on paper, to this address. Baldwin embeds a set of their screwdrivers into the top of the handsome construction. Each gets a pair of little scoops on top, a clear reference to the proverbial phrase "double dipping." He surely took perverse delight in the fact that the company that was trying to evade its taxes made screwdrivers — a tool that fits the spirit of the scenario.

Social commentary plays a large role in the works on view, all made since 1995. He is clearly something of a moralist in a mode that Mark Twain would have understood — a man who can find dark humor in the things that outrage him.

Baldwin doesn't so much explain this strain in his work as offer an anecdote to illustrate this passion. "It kind of goes back to bumper stickers," he says. "I saw one some time ago that 'Mean People Suck.' The use of 'suck' kind of bothered me. But I saw the sticker again one day, and I decided that it was appropriate — mean people really do suck.'

He clearly tries to inject a similarly sardonic, if more precisely calibrated, tone into some of his commentary. And he succeeds nicely in the piece called "U.S. Handguns Kill 3,000 Children Each Year."

A butt of a gun protrudes from a single color wall panel. Its embedded text reads: "American civilization. It would be a grand idea."

When the content of the work is so charged, it's easy to miss the impeccable care that he puts into each work. He's the first to discount its importance.

"Craftsmanship has nothing to with art," reads the text on the upper portion of a work titled "Little Lectures on Art." Paradoxically, the work is beautifully crafted.

Baldwin may be a touch ironic, but he's mostly serious.

"It's the idea that matters most," he says. Then, to illustrate his point, he adds: "I can write a little, communicate a point or get someone from Point A to Point B, but I can't write like Shakespeare." He is the artist as an educator in several selections - a  loose group he divides into smaller categories.

He clearly tries to inject a similarly sardonic, if more precisely calibrated, tone into some of his commentary.

"There's art about art, art about teaching, and art about observing," he explains.

There are homages to other artists in several fields, too: Marcel Duchamp (a formative influence), Robert Frost and Aaron Copland, among others.

"Little Lectures," a beautifully finished box with compartments, is a tidily provocative example of art about art and art about observing. The writing on its glass cover says: "A dialogue with the viewer must take place / what do you bring to the work?" Then it addresses the crux of the issue. A hasty look at most rich works isn't likely to yield much pleasure or insight, any more than skimming a novel or poem would.

Baldwin proceeds to make this point concretely by including a clock under glass that ticks off the seconds. And he can't help but include a statistic (source not cited) about viewing time: the national average is seven seconds.

"Actually it's down to 6.9 seconds," he observes, "but I decided to round it off."

Robert L. Pincus: (619) 293-1831; robert.pincus@uniontrib.com

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