Brutus Killed Caesar

Baldessari is well known for using disparate elements of everyday life in his photographically generated works of art. In this, one of his earliest printed artists' books he juxtaposes three images in a linear format using two photographic portraits of a younger and older man facing each other with a photograph of a common household object between them. Each leaf repeats the same portraits but illustrates a different murder weapon; a kitchen knife, a wooden board, a magnifying glass, a book of matches, pushpins, etc.

[Ref. John Baldessari. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. 1990. pp. 247; Moeglin-Delcroix, Esthétique du livre d'artiste, p. 275].