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I go back and forth between wanting to be abundantly simple and maddeningly complex.
John Baldessari
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John Baldessari
Age: 88 †
Born: 1931
Born: June 7
Died: 2020
Died: January 2
Architect
Artist
Conceptual Artist
Illustrator
Painter
Photographer
Video Artist
National City
California
John Anthony Baldessari
Maddeningly
Abundantly
Wanting
Complexes
Complex
Forth
Simple
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More quotes by John Baldessari
Ideally I would like the work to be a hybrid between painting and photography.
John Baldessari
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.
John Baldessari
I think the term 'conceptual art' is a useful term for writers, a basket to put people in, like Pop Art or Impressionism or whatever.
John Baldessari
Photos should suggest a word(s) and vice versa. They should be equal and interchangeable.
John Baldessari
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?
John Baldessari
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
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
It's human desire to be understood. And we always feel we're not understood.
John Baldessari
Most of my friends are women. I think women are more interesting to talk to.
John Baldessari
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
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
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
I will not make anymore boring art.
John Baldessari
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
I always felt like I was right out of Dickens, looking in the window of the Christmas feast, but not at the feast.
John Baldessari
That should be the goal for all art, to be as simple as a flashcard.
John Baldessari
Artists are better at finding a way to kill their time.
John Baldessari
Probably one of the worst things that happened to photography is that cameras have viewfinders.
John Baldessari
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.
John Baldessari
