Collaboration with John Baldessari, 2018
Vinyl LP packaging
Courtesy the artist
Releasing the LP with Third Man Records included the opportunity to press
thousands of records in one of the premier vinyl plants in the world, Jack White’s
Third Man facility in Cass Corridor, Detroit, Michigan. Following the January release
of the album digitally, on February 23rd the physical vinyl was made available to
purchase as both a standard version and limited edition. The standard version shipped
with a 180 gram black vinyl record with Nike and adidas logos scratched into it, a lyrics
and production credit booklet, an 8.5 x 11 inch modified 1971 letter that John
Baldessari sent to museum director Charlotte Townsend regarding the making of his
work I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art, and an 11 x 9 inch poster of the lyrics to the
track "Climate Change", written in Swiss German. The record sleeve is a rendition of
Shirt's I Will Not Make Any More Boring Rap, 2016 and the back cover features a
modified Baldessari workEverything is Purged From This Painting But Art, 1966. The
cover image depicts an unmodified Pure Beauty, 1968, released 50 years later to the date
from when John debuted the acrylic paint on canvas. As it turns out, months before talks
had begun with Third Man, Shirt had reached out cold to John Baldessari's studio
requesting a meeting with the artist. The request was accepted and some days later in
September 2017, the rapper spent about an hour with the 95-year-old at his Venice
Beach compound. The two mostly talked art, with Shirt explaining that he’d been
recording an album at school in Switzerland based on John’s 1968 work “Pure Beauty.”
A year later when designing the vinyl’s packaging, Shirt had the idea to reach back out and
ask for permission to license the famous images of the work, to which Baldessari obliged.
Limited-edition bundles shipped with a white Champion bengal tiger t-shirt that
referenced the Shirt work Bengal Tiger, 2014 and the Baldessari work Frames and Ribbons,
1988, as well as a matte silver USB that hung off the cover attached by a neon zip tie,
loaded with a pdf of credits and lyrics, mp3's, and 1,000 Photos, 2018, a new work
explained to be a collection of photos taken by Shirt between September 2015 and
October 2017 when he moved to Europe and began making the album.
Previous work Next work
