John Baldessari Quotes

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

I will not make anymore boring art.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

There's no such thing as a bad photograph.

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.

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?

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

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

Writing helped me understand what I was thinking about.

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

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

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

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

I want to produce images that startle one into recollection.

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.

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.

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

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.