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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

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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
Thinking
Baskets
Like
Pops
People
Useful
Writers
Term
Whatever
Impressionism
Art
Basket
Think
Conceptual

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Ideally I would like the work to be a hybrid between painting and photography.
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I will not make anymore boring art.
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Most of my friends are women. I think women are more interesting to talk to.
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Probably one of the worst things that happened to photography is that cameras have viewfinders.
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I always felt like I was right out of Dickens, looking in the window of the Christmas feast, but not at the feast.
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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.
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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?
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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That should be the goal for all art, to be as simple as a flashcard.
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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.
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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.
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Artists are better at finding a way to kill their time.
John Baldessari
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It's human desire to be understood. And we always feel we're not understood.
John Baldessari
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Photos should suggest a word(s) and vice versa. They should be equal and interchangeable.
John Baldessari
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I go back and forth between wanting to be abundantly simple and maddeningly complex.
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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