“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.” WorldFeelsTryingLittlesBitsLittle BitAbsurdAnd Off Author:John Baldessari
“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.)” ThinkingTryingKindArtStudentsCamerasPhotographAssignmentsPuzzling Author:John Baldessari
“What I try to do is reinvigorate strategies and clichés I find in Hollywood movies. At a certain point I had these huge folders, each one classified according to subject matter or genre: people with guns, people kissing, Indians and cowboys falling off horses, getting shot, getting shot with arrows - almost every plot device. Then I cropped the cheap, recycled imagery to give exhausted images new meaning, or at least something other than their original meaning. I'm basically reassembling atoms to give them a meaning that's more au courant.” PeopleGivingTryingMatterCertainFallSubjectsHugeKissingGunShotsHollywoodHorseOriginalsStrategyGenrePlotDevicesAtomsExhaustedCowboyImageryArrowsSubject MatterHollywood MoviesFalling OffRecycledFolders Author:John Baldessari
“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.” ThinkingTryingWellsEndsBodyLastsFacesCommunityHoursTeachingStudentsCollegeCoupleModelsDrawsSpendingDrawingReverseDesperationSessionProceduresTotalityCommunity CollegeDrapes Author:John Baldessari