John Baldessari Quotes

Quotes about:

• I go back and forth between wanting to be abundantly simple and maddeningly complex.

  John Baldessari

  Simple, Back And Forth, Complexes

  Interview with David Salle, www.interviewmagazine.com. October 9, 2013.

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• I will not make anymore boring art.

  John Baldessari

  Art, Boring

  John Baldessari, Anne Ayres, Newport Harbor Art Museum (1989). “L.A. pop in the sixties”

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

  John Baldessari

  Art, Saws, Ifs

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• I think art, if it's meaningful at all, is a conversation with other artists. You say something, they say something, you move back and forth.

  John Baldessari

  Meaningful, Art, Moving

  Interview with David Salle, www.interviewmagazine.com. October 9, 2013.

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• Well, why is this art? Why isn't that art?

  John Baldessari

  Art, Wells

  Interview with Christopher Knight, www.aaa.si.edu. April 4, 1992.

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• 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.

  John Baldessari

  Art, Tired, Kids

  "Just an Artist". Interview with Susan Sollins, art21.org. July 2008.

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• 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.

  John Baldessari

  Art, Talent, Like You

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• 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.

  John Baldessari

  Eye, Air, Hands

  John Baldessari, Hugh Marlais Davies, Andrea Hales, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (1996). “John Baldessari: National City”, Museum of Contemporary Art San

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• I don't try to be funny. It's just that I feel the world is a little bit absurd and off-kilter and I'm sort of reporting.

  John Baldessari

  Trying, World, Littles

  Interview with David Salle, www.interviewmagazine.com. October 9, 2013.

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• Artists are better at finding a way to kill their time.

  John Baldessari

  Artist, Way, Findings

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• There's no such thing as a bad photograph.

  John Baldessari

  Photography, Photograph

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• 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.

  John Baldessari

  Smart, Successful, Work Out

  Interview with David Salle, www.interviewmagazine.com. October 9, 2013.

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• 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?

  John Baldessari

  Why Not, Definitions, Normal

  Interview with David Salle, www.interviewmagazine.com. October 9, 2013.

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

  John Baldessari

  Two, Articulation, Surface

  Mark Lawrence Rosenthal, Marla Prather, Ian Alteveer, Rebecca Lowery, Polly Apfelbaum (2012). “Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years”, p.119, Metropolitan Museum of Art

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• I could never figure out why photography and art had separate histories. So I decided to explore both.

  John Baldessari

  Photography, Art, Figures

  Interview with David Salle, www.interviewmagazine.com. October 9, 2013.

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• Writing helped me understand what I was thinking about.

  John Baldessari

  Writing, Thinking

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

  John Baldessari

  Art, Simple, Goal

  Interview with David Salle, www.interviewmagazine.com. October 09, 2013.

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• I want to produce images that startle one into recollection.

  John Baldessari

  Want, Produce, Recollection

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

  John Baldessari

  Vices, Should, Vice Versa

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

  John Baldessari

  Desire, Feels, Understood

  Interview with David Salle, www.interviewmagazine.com. October 9, 2013.

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

  John Baldessari

  Photography, Cameras, Worst

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• I used to jokingly say, "I don't teach art. I'm an art doctor." Students come to me and say, "My art's sick," and we help them make it well.

  John Baldessari

  Art, Doctors, Sick

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• I can't imagine a life without thinking, doing art. I don't feel any need to be a world traveler or an adventurer. I'm very happy doing what I'm doing. I think somehow I know that I should have a larger vision of art, but I can't think of what that would be.

  John Baldessari

  Art, Thinking, Should Have

  Interview with David Salle, www.interviewmagazine.com. October 09, 2013.

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• Most of my friends are women. I think women are more interesting to talk to.

  John Baldessari

  Thinking, Interesting, My Friends

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• The idea of vaudeville clowns and court jesters is always to show the flaw, to point out what's not working and why it's not coherent.

  John Baldessari

  Ideas, Vaudeville, Flaws

  Interview with David Salle, www.interviewmagazine.com. October 09, 2013.

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