John Baldessari in "Systems" - Season 5 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

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

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

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

How could I change people's minds?

[machine humming]

I am making art.
I am making art.

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

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

What interests me in life is the
absurdity in life.

[laughs]

[door closes]

- Hey, John.
- Hi, Marie.

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

- A couple of them...
- Good.

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

- Art making is about making a choice.

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

this color over that color
or this object over that object

or– you know, on and on and on.

And you have to make a choice.

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

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

also want these framed
individually, or are they just

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

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

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

questions that we could talk
about, yeah.

-Okay. No problem.

-My emergence in the art world:

I was linked with
conceptual art, minimal art.

never quite totally subscribed

to it; I thought it was
a little boring.

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

and one of them was
being tasteful.

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

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

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

I just decided to be

very systematic about it
and use the color wheel.

Yeah, I like the guy–
the green guy.

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

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

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

I don't know.
Anything else?

My father was Catholic.
My mother was Lutheran.

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

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

You know, the King James version.

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

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

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

It didn't heal bones.

It didn't help people find
shelter or whatever.

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

Got to say, I owe it to
my sister.

I got my degree in art, and she said,

"Well, how are you gonna
support yourself?"

[chuckles]

So I got a teaching credential.

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

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

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

and another approach
until they get it.

And then I realized that art was
about communication.

I was learning how to
communicate by teaching.

And– and then the art infected

my classroom teaching, trying to
be inventive there.

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

talking about in the classroom,
and vice versa."

You know, they're
interchangeable.

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

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

look between them...

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

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

to look at something pinned
to the wall.

I'm not looking at the space

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

Words are just a way we

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

figure out why they had to be
in different baskets.

I think in my multiple-image pieces,

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

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

with words.

-John came to my studio at UCLA,

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

for you," which was very exciting,

I mean, just to hear that, right?

Like, I was like–

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

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

Photoshop for him
or something like that.

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

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

[laughing]

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

He knew I was having a little

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

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

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

And so we began.

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

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

He comes here every morning
at the same time.

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

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

- In the early years, I would

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

And then one would spend three

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

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

you know, all of those
problems that would make hanging

one work next to another less
good than another hanging.

[chuckles]

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

never know what you're going to need.

I did a retrospective show

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

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

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

This is a model of the

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

One of the principle things I'm

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

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

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

particularly fond of.

Curiously, he did work in his

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

All of the outside walls, where

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

So you will see no windows whatsoever.

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

Where there is a window in

the walls, there will be
substituted views of the

Pacific Ocean and landscape
in Southern California.

But in front of each window,

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

contemplate the view.

Then in one wall, I'm having

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

flanked left and right by two
upturned noses as sconces

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

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

And rather than glorify
Mies Van Der Rohe–

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

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

Actually, I started using stills

from movies not because they
were from the movies;

I could get the pictures cheaply.

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

people carry around in
their head, and then playing and

rearranging those images
for them.

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

And they would be local
celebrities, whatever:

The major, the fire chief,
some dignitary.

And a lot them, they would be

pointing to things, shaking
hands, smiling at the–

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

Standing with the president;
that sort of thing.

And I was attracted but repulsed

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

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

making decisions that would
probably affect me, and,

you know, I was not doing
anything about it.

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

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

I was using these price 

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

"Wow."

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

All of a sudden, they had no

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

They were replaceable even
though the person changes.

I think my idea is this:

not so much structure that it's inhibiting–

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

but not so loose that
it could be anything.

I guess it's like a corral.

It's a corral around your idea:

That you can move
but not too much.

And it's that limited movement
that promotes creativity.

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

I think I started out with noses.

And then ears.
Then noses and ears.

And now I'm doing foreheads
with furrows

and eyebrows.

You know, you always come back

to the same idea but from
a different direction.

Yeah, we're gonna do
dog eyebrows next.