A banal image of a single paperclip captioned with the equally unremarkable word "AND" might initially suggest a straightforward parallel between the grammatical conjunction, which links ideas, and the device that affixes pieces of paper together. However, in this case the ubiquitous word is taken from Francisco de Goya's scathing titles for his Disasters of War print series (begun in 1810), decrying the horrors of violence. Other image–word pairings in Baldessari's Goya series include a knife accompanied by the phrase "AN ARM AND A LEG" and an empty bowl with the terse declaration, "THIS IS BAD." Baldessari is less interested in logical relationships between image and text than with "what conceptual leaps people can make from one bit of information to another and how they can fill the space."
Gallery label from 2007.
