WEBVTT

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[JOHN BALDESSARI] I'm always interested in
things that we don't call art,

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and I'd say, "Well, why not?

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I mean, why--you know, what
could I do this to make it art?

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How could I change people's minds?

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[machine humming]

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I am making art.
I am making art.

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You know, I love it.
Like--like, you know, all of

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a sudden, because I said
it's art, somebody believes me.

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What interests me in life is the
absurdity in life.

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[laughs]

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[door closes]

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- Hey, John.
- Hi, Marie.

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- Okay, I got these new ones.
- Oh, good.

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- A couple of them...
- Good.

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- that I have some questions 
about. I'll put them up.

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- Art making is about making a choice.

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For me, it was like you choose
one thing over another:

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this color over that color
or this object over that object

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or– you know, on and on and on.

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And you have to make a choice.

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-Okay, so the questions that
I had about these ones are,

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I know that you want these
framed individually, but do you

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also want these framed
individually, or are they just

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gonna be one print that's framed
in one frame?

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-They'll be in a single frame.
-Okay.

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-Well, maybe not now but
later, you know, I have other

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questions that we could talk
about, yeah.

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-Okay. No problem.

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-My emergence in the art world:

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I was linked with
conceptual art, minimal art.

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never quite totally subscribed

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to it; I thought it was
a little boring.

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But there were a lot of things
I didn't want to shed,

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and one of them was
being tasteful.

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That's one of the reasons I gave
up painting, because it was all

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about being tasteful: you know,
the right red next to the right

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blue, and you're very carefully
mixing the colors.

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I just decided to be

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very systematic about it
and use the color wheel.

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Yeah, I like the guy–
the green guy.

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He might be too green.
I don't know.

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-Oh, yeah?
- I'm still thinking about it.

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- Yeah, a little toxic green.
- Yeah. Yeah.

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I don't know.
Anything else?

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My father was Catholic.
My mother was Lutheran.

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I went to a Methodist church.
That was the local church.

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I certainly got a love of
literature, reading the bible,

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You know, the King James version.

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And I got a real sense of
moral obligation, and I think

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that's why I was a later starter
in art, because I–

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art didn't seem to do anybody
any good that I could see.

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It didn't heal bones.

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It didn't help people find
shelter or whatever.

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And I wanted to be a social
worker, I think.

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Got to say, I owe it to
my sister.

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I got my degree in art, and she said,

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"Well, how are you gonna
support yourself?"

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[chuckles]

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So I got a teaching credential.

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Teaching is about communication.
Lecturing doesn't do it.

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You have to see the light in the
students' eyes that they get it.

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And if you don't see the light,
then you try another approach

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and another approach
until they get it.

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And then I realized that art was
about communication.

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I was learning how to
communicate by teaching.

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And– and then the art infected

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my classroom teaching, trying to
be inventive there.

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And in effect, I was saying,
"the art I do is what I'm

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talking about in the classroom,
and vice versa."

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You know, they're
interchangeable.

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One thing– I was trying to teach
students how to look.

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I said, "If you're looking at
two things, don't look at them;

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look between them...

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because there's that stuff too. That's– this is important."
But we prioritize.

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We– you know, if I'm looking at
this wall over here, it's normal

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to look at something pinned
to the wall.

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I'm not looking at the space

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between those two things.
But that's very important.

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Words are just a way we

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communicate, images are a way
we communicate, and I couldn't

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figure out why they had to be
in different baskets.

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I think in my multiple-image pieces,

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I probably have this
idea that there's a word behind them.

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I'm probably building like
a writer or a poet builds 

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with words.

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-John came to my studio at UCLA,

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and we had a meeting, and
he said, "I have an opportunity

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for you," which was very exciting,

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I mean, just to hear that, right?

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Like, I was like–

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You know, I knew some of my
classmates were maybe working

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for him, doing a little painting
or working doing a little

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Photoshop for him
or something like that.

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And I said, "Wow, okay,
what is it?"

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And he's like, "Well, I just got this dog,
and I need someone to walk him."

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[laughing]

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And I said, "Okay."
I'm like, "Let me think about it."

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He knew I was having a little

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trouble at school, you know,
like, with my work and going

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through a little grad school
crisis in terms of ideas and so on.

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So he said, "Okay, every Monday,
you have to bring work to me."

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And so we began.

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I think he taught me to be human
when it comes to the work.

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You know, there is something
very humble about the way he works.

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He comes here every morning
at the same time.

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He shows you how, you know,
it's a long process.

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I mean, it's a lifetime
commitment to the work.

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- In the early years, I would

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just make work, and it would be
shipped to the gallery.

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And then one would spend three

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or four days moving works around
and seeing how one spoke to the

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other, how the size of one work
would relate to the size of the other,

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you know, all of those
problems that would make hanging

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one work next to another less
good than another hanging.

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[chuckles]

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And I would always ship more
work than I needed because you

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never know what you're going to need.

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I did a retrospective show

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that started at the Museum of
Contemporary art in Los Angeles.

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And I saw how they had a model
ad worked with everything,

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and I said, "Well, why don't
I do that?"

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This is a model of the

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Haus Lange by Mies Van Der Rohe
In Krefeld, Germany.

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One of the principle things I'm

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doing with the Mies Van Der Rohe
Haus is to use his materials in

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a way that would be more than he
would have used them.

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And the principle material here
is brick, which he wasn't

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particularly fond of.

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Curiously, he did work in his

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father's brickyard, so he did
have some familiarity with the material.

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All of the outside walls, where

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there's a window, they're
covered up with fake brick.

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So you will see no windows whatsoever.

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And Mies Van Der Rohe was very
careful in framing the views of the garden.

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Where there is a window in

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the walls, there will be
substituted views of the

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Pacific Ocean and landscape
in Southern California.

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But in front of each window,

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there'll be one Mies Van Der Rohe
chair where you can sit and

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contemplate the view.

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Then in one wall, I'm having

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manufactured as an addition
a couch in the shape of an ear,

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flanked left and right by two
upturned noses as sconces

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so that you'll either have light
or flowers coming out of the nostrils.

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So I figured it's everything
that tMies Van Der Rohe would hate.

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And rather than glorify
Mies Van Der Rohe–

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He's had enough glorification--
I just thought I would, you know,

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poke a little fun of him,
do reverse Mies Van Der Rohe.

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Actually, I started using stills

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from movies not because they
were from the movies;

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I could get the pictures cheaply.

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For me, it's using this
data bank of images

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people carry around in
their head, and then playing and

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rearranging those images
for them.

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A lot of photographs I had
bought would be from newspapers.

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And they would be local
celebrities, whatever:

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The major, the fire chief,
some dignitary.

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And a lot them, they would be

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pointing to things, shaking
hands, smiling at the–

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You know, it's a photo op,
you know, kind of thing.

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Standing with the president;
that sort of thing.

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And I was attracted but repulsed

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by these, and I realized why
I was repulsed by them was that

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I was there, isolated in my
studio, and these people were

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making decisions that would
probably affect me, and,

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you know, I was not doing
anything about it.

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And that was one of the
arguments I had with art in the

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first places, that, you know,
it's not doing anything.

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I was using these price 

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stickers, and I just put them
over the faces, and I said,

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"Wow."

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The phrase I keep using is,
it leveled the playing field.

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All of a sudden, they had no

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power on me and really saw them
for what they were.

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They were replaceable even
though the person changes.

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I think my idea is this:

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not so much structure that it's inhibiting–

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I mean,
that's there's no wiggle room–

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but not so loose that
it could be anything.

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I guess it's like a corral.

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It's a corral around your idea:

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That you can move
but not too much.

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And it's that limited movement
that promotes creativity.

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I've been working over the years
with various body parts.

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I think I started out with noses.

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And then ears.
Then noses and ears.

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And now I'm doing foreheads
with furrows

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and eyebrows.

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You know, you always come back

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to the same idea but from
a different direction.

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Yeah, we're gonna do
dog eyebrows next.