John Baldessari, Marian Goodman

Veteran artist John Baldessari has a lot to answer for. A pioneer of conceptual art, this American has been at it since the since the 60s - long before sharks met formaldehyde or Tracey Emin neglected to make her bed. He spawned a generation of artists: as his former student David Salle said “at least three generations of artists doing dumb stuff is largely John’s fault.”

Conceptual art is about ideas, not contemplation: it produces philosophical, sometimes wilfully difficult work, where theory became the art itself. For four decades, Baldessari has been making brusque, ironic artworks - themselves high-minded quips on the nature of art, that combine language image and found objects.

One of his most famous works is I Am Making Art, a video piece in which Baldessari makes several arm movements, reciting the phrase, "I am making art," after each gesture. In1970, Baldessari took all of his paintings of them to a mortuary and had them burned. He poured some of the ashes into a book-shaped urn, titling the work Cremation Project.

Luckily for us, he's made some more. His latest series, Miro and Life in General comes to Marian Goodman this January. It's typically high-minded - in each work Baldessari has paired a detail from one particular Miro painting with a seemingly incongruous classic Hollywood film still, which Baldessari refers to as ‘Life in General’.

At 85, it seems, this artist is not done toying with us just yet.