WEBVTT

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John Baldessari: Recycling Images

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[On poster: "Learn to read"]

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My early assistants would throw out some paper and I would take it out of the trash and say,

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"Why are you throwing this away? You can use it."

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When I was going to school, you had to write on both sides of the paper to save paper.

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So yeah, I'm a pack rat. Like, "Ah, I could use that somehow."

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I saw a lot of that in India, how people there will recycle anything

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And make something new out of it. You see it a lot in folk art.

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I probably got my... My first lesson probably came from Schwitters.

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You know, he was picking up stuff out of the street. And I would pick up photographs from the street.

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Well, I think if somebody wanted to borrow some imagery I was using, I would be flattered.

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Ha! Here's one I had worked on.

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I really just don't think imageries should be owned, including my own.

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If it's part of our world, it's like owning words. How could you own words? I mean, it's stuff to use.

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She was retouched. Look... [chuckles]