Top John Baldessari Quotes

John Baldessari Biography

John Anthony Baldessari (born June 17, 1931) is an American conceptual artist known for his work featuring found photography and appropriated images. He lives and works in Santa Monica and Venice, California.

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John Baldessari Quotes

Talent is cheap, you have to be possessed or obsessed, rather. You really have to feel like you cannot not do art, and that is something you can't will.

Art, Cheap, Like, Like You, Talent

Ideally I would like the work to be a hybrid between painting and photography.

Hybrid, Ideally, Like, Painting, Photography, Work

I always felt like I was right out of Dickens, looking in the window of the Christmas feast, but not at the feast.

Dickens, Felt, Like, Window

I was always interested in language. I thought, why not? If a painting, by the normal definition of the term, is paint on canvas, why can't it be painted words on canvas?

Definitions, Language, Normal, Painting, Term, Why Not

Probably one of the worst things that happened to photography is that cameras have viewfinders.

Cameras, Happened, Photography, Things, Worst

Find the most puzzling kind of art you can think of, and then go out and try to approximate it with your camera. Take a photograph that corresponds to it. (Assignment to students. )

Art, Students, Take, Think, Thinking, Trying

Photos should suggest a word(s) and vice versa. They should be equal and interchangeable.

Photos, Should, Suggest, Versa, Vice Versa, Vices

A TWO-DIMENSIONAL SURFACE WITHOUT ANY ARTICULATION IS A DEAD EXPERIENCE

Articulation, Dead, Experience, Surface, Two

I think I live such a boring life. But I can't imagine any other kind of life, so I guess it's the life I want.

Thinking, Want, Kind, Life, Imagine

The idea was to take fine art and put it into the location of the movie scripts. The script itself is collage - some of the lines come from actual movies and I've written others to make the text work with the found image. In this way, the details of old dead guys' paintings (from the collection of the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, where this work will be exhibited in relation to the historical paintings) become illustrations of the movie scripts. I found this mélange of high art and Hollywood amusing.

Art, Collection, Found, Ideas, Museums, Old

That should be the goal for all art, to be as simple as a flashcard.

Art, Goal, Simple

I was teaching live drawing in a community college and students started zoning in on the face and spending a couple of hours on that and then putting the rest of the body on the face only in the last hour. It didn't work to just tell them, 'Well, you're really not thinking of the body as a totality. ' So in desperation I would put a drape over the model's head so they couldn't see it. They had to draw the body and then at the end of the session for an hour I would take the drape off just to try to reverse their procedure.

College, Couple, Face, Hours, Teaching

There's no such thing as a bad photograph.

Bad, Photograph, Photography, Thing

I was getting tired of hearing the complaint, "My kid could do this," and "We don't get it. What's modern art? Blah, blah, blah. " And I wondered what would really happen if you gave people what they wanted, something they always look at.

Art, Kids, People, Tired

If I saw the art around me that I liked, then I wouldn't do art.

Art, Ifs, Liked, Saw, Saws

It's human desire to be understood. And we always feel we're not understood.

Desire, Feels, Human, Understood

I didn't see painters doing paintings of glassware and glass shelves or sand dunes and receding snow fences. Why does that interest photographers and not artists?

Artist, Dunes, Glasses, Receding, Sand, Snow

A lot of ideas don't translate very well into art. To say, "Oh my god, the grass is green. . . " You're going to end up with a big green painting.

Art, Grass, Green, Ideas, Painting

Look at the subject as if you have never seen it before. Examine it from every side. Draw its outline with your eyes or in the air with your hands, and saturate yourself with it.

Air, Eye, Eyes, Hands, Look, Seen

If you're smart, you abandon the things that didn't work out so well, and you enlarge upon the things that seem to be successful.

Enlarge, Smart, Successful, Things, Work, Work Out

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John Baldessari Biography

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