“If I saw the art around me that I liked, then I wouldn’t do art.”
John Anthony Baldessari (born June 17, 1931, National City, California) is an American conceptual artist known for his work featuring found photography and appropriated images. He lives and works in Santa Monica and Venice, California.
Initially a painter, Baldessari began to incorporate texts and photography into his canvases in the mid 1960s. He has created thousands of works that demonstrate—and, in many cases, combine—the narrative potential of images and the associative power of language within the boundaries of the work of art. His art has been featured in more than 200 solo exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe. His work has had a huge influence on Cindy Sherman, David Salle, and Barbara Kruger among others.
In 1959, Baldessari began teaching art in the San Diego school system. He kept teaching for nearly three decades, in schools and junior colleges and community colleges, and eventually at the university level. In 1970, Baldessari began teaching at CalArts. His first classes included David Salle, Jack Goldstein, James Welling, Barbara Bloom, Matt Mullican, and Troy Brauntuch. While at CalArts, Baldessari taught “the infamous Post Studio class”, which he intended to “indicate people not daubing away at canvases or chipping away at stone, that there might be some other kind of class situation.” The class, which operated outside of medium-specificity, was influential in informing the context for addressing a student’s art practice at CalArts. He quit teaching at CalArts in 1986, moving on to teach at UCLA, which he continued until 2008.