John Baldessari: Recycling Images
[On poster: "Learn to read"]
My early assistants would throw out some paper and I would take it out of the trash and say,
"Why are you throwing this away? You can use it."
When I was going to school, you had to write on both sides of the paper to save paper.
So yeah, I'm a pack rat. Like, "Ah, I could use that somehow."
I saw a lot of that in India, how people there will recycle anything
And make something new out of it. You see it a lot in folk art.
I probably got my... My first lesson probably came from Schwitters.
You know, he was picking up stuff out of the street. And I would pick up photographs from the street.
Well, I think if somebody wanted to borrow some imagery I was using, I would be flattered.
Ha! Here's one I had worked on.
I really just don't think imageries should be owned, including my own.
If it's part of our world, it's like owning words. How could you own words? I mean, it's stuff to use.
She was retouched. Look... [chuckles]