Four Hands and a Baseball Bat

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of Lincoln Center Education, a pioneering, international leader in arts education, renowned visual artist John Baldessari has created the limited edition print Four Hands and a Baseball Bat (2015), a clever visual pun on what it means to “play.”

The grainy image harkens back to the glory days of baseball.  Baldessari has cropped out the immediately identifiable characteristics of the original image and zoomed in on a specific area of the found photograph. By focusing on the baseball player’s hands, Baldessari associates the playing done by legendary athletes on the field to the playing that is done by legendary performers on Lincoln Center’s stages.

Baldessari is a recipient of the Americans for the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award and the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement awarded by the Venice Biennale. His works are held in the many public art collections including: The Art Institute of Chicago, National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and Museum of Modern Art in New York.