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cow art
In 1972, whilst a student, Baker established the Cow Art movement, which he loosely based around his newly discovered, and much beloved Pop Art. Lasting for nearly three years, Cow Art embraced a multitude of styles and approaches which allowed him to establish his creative practice through a single theme. By his referencing of contemporary art, through the creation of the Cow Art Manifesto, he was using parody as a means of learning his trade in the manner of an apprentice learning from the old master, through the exploration of different processes - albeit with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek.
how to make modern art
'How to Make Modern Art', which was what it said on the tin, used the dialectical nuances of modern art as an exposé of itself, turning it belly-up to identify the methodology and process that an artist employs to increase the critical value of a work of art. Along with the Emperors New Clothes Syndrome of critics and curators, who will elevate either an artist or a new art form beyond its merit in order to assert an authority over what is 'in' and what is 'out', the conspiracy of both the artist and these cultural doyens of taste and opinion, became an easy target for Baker, providing him with both a wealth of material for his visual rhetoric as well as the vocabulary upon which the series of work was based upon.
thesis #1
Thesis #1 (1978) used contemporary iconography and presentation formats to deliver a subversive critique of the very industry that Baker was indirectly aspiring to at the time - allowing him to make his obtuse analytical statements from behind the veil of familiarity. By using the front cover of Vogue magazine as a deliberate metaphor for the modish tendencies of the art world, he was at the same time offering a consistent visual template that allowed him to focus on content, without the distractions of having to entertain a range of processes, as he had done with 'How to Make Modern Art'.
Through this use of the structure of insets, headings and mastheads, he was also able to bypass the compositional conventions of perspective and figurative representation in favour of a multi-linear narrative that enabled him to move beyond the confines of environment and enter into the realm of semiotic engagement.
Spanning an entire year, Baker produced one 'edition' per month (mirroring the yearly amount of editions of Vogue magazine), each addressing different aspects of the relationship of the artist to the art world, and mixing hand made marks, writing and text with photographic image.
(Extract taken from the monograph, From Now Until Yesterday)
towards anonymity 1980
Since his declaration in nineteen seventy six, Baker had long held the opinion that the role of artist as celebrity was, by then, totally outmoded, and that art should move to a neo-artisan model, where art practice, whether it be physical or intellectual was measured by its inherent integrity and not a commercially defined value. Having maintained that the contribution of an artist to society was no different than that of a plumber, and that you pay a plumber for the quality of their work rather than their status within a contrived hierarchy, he had conceived the exhibition, Towards Anonymity 1980 (1979) as a proclamation of a new era of egalitarian art, with the artist as worker, and art as everyday commodity.
To iterate this, the publicity for exhibition (which also showcased the debut performance of the post-punk band, Household Name, alongside both Thesis #1, Thesis #2 and the work of Monty Rakusen) had made no reference to either the names of the artists or the band, and aimed solely to promote the art. In addition, the subject and titles of the artworks were also shared with the compositions of the band establishing Baker's non-delineation between disciplines and a readiness crossover from one art-form to another in his exploration of an idea.
(Extract taken from the monograph, From Now Until Yesterday)
thesis #2
To complete the holy trinity of artist, industry and audience, Baker now turned his attention to the latter, producing a set of ten diptychs concerned with the audiences interpretation of the artist's work and the relationship of the artist to their immediate audience, or clique. Going under the banner of Thesis #2, 'Everybody Understands a Shirt, but what of it's Context?' and 'Trousers as a Metaphor for the Artist and his Circle', he still continued with the process of photomontage and the use of a template that he had employed in Thesis #1, however, this was now applied to the three-dimensional - pinning images to cellophane-wrapped shirts and trousers and including physical objects, such as tubes of glitter, confetti etc.
The two components of clothing, the shirt and trousers, acted both as frame and meaning - on one hand, in a pragmatic sense, they offered familiar objects to the audience presented and packaged as they would be in clothing shop, whilst on the other, through both their original function of providing warmth and modesty, and the uniformity of the two items of clothing, they added an additional strata of message, that of empathy, or of a belonging to a club. If in fact, the spectator did understand the context, or to be more accurate, the re-contextualising of the shirt, a common language would have been established, gaining them automatic access to the artist's circle, and creating a co-dependency between the two parties. However, by the framing of a shirt in the first place, this was instantly removing the function that it represented and deliberately questioned the perception of the audience and their membership to the club - something that was further confused and compounded by the addition of image, text and object, creating an antinomy or self-referential paradox, that Baker had no real intention of resolving.
(Extract taken from the monograph, From Now Until Yesterday)
in between
In the period between Thesis #2 and Art Karaoke, Baker dedicated much of his time to rock'n'roll forming a succession of bands with his musical collaborator, Paul Staniforth, which included Household Name, Johnny Jumps the Bandwagon, The Yahoo Family, Loved Ones, Dream Stealers, The Art Cowboys and The Jack Shites, of which videos can be found in the music/video section of the website.
It was not that he didn't produce any art, but that his output tended to be more sporadic and of a one-off nature
art karaoke : reflection series
In collaboration with over thirty artists, Dream Stealers (Tony Baker and Paul Staniforth) had produced an audio visual album of music and moving image known as Art Karaoke (see music/video section) that mixed together pieces of sound and image from the contributing artists that had been based on seven one-word titles that Dream Stealers referred to as lyrical metaphors.
Wanting to extend the project beyond the original video format and working on the premise that the album was both fifty six minutes long and made up of twenty five frames per second, they calculated that there were potentially eighty four thousand images that they could do something with. It was a combination of this notion that Art Karaoke could be infinite, and the comment from Jacqui Callis's young son, Eddie, who described it as a moving painting, that led Baker and Staniforth to embark on a series of prints taken from the video. The resulting 'Reflection' series, taken from the first track of the album, successfully captured the essence of the moving image, whilst at the same time creating its own aesthetic, that traversed both painting and digital image-making, to produce a set of prints that were almost liquid in appearance - and by making the ephemeral permanent, suitably concluded the project.
