Baldessari Sings LeWitt

Baldessari Sings LeWitt is graphic designer Toom Tragel's complete transcription of a deadpan 1972 performance in which John Baldessari sang the tenets of conceptual art.

In the original film, Baldessari sits with a sheaf of papers and sings each of Sol LeWitt's thirty-five Sentences on Conceptual Art to a different pop melody, after the model of Ella Fitzgerald Sings Cole Porter. Tragel's softcover book, published by Rollo Press in Zurich, prints Baldessari's spoken introduction and every musical score in full, with LeWitt's sentences set as lyrics beneath the notation, and preserves Baldessari's on-camera asides and self-corrections.

The piece is one of Baldessari's most cited works from his early conceptual period, using pop-song structure to expose both the earnestness and the absurdity of translating LeWitt's philosophical statements into performance. It sits alongside his contemporaneous text and photo-text pieces as an example of his sustained, wry interrogation of what conceptual art claims to be.