As I have been doing my sort of regular searches for different photographic artists outside my usual pool of inspiration, I came across John Baldessari in a list of names I had written in my note book some time ago. Although, I have heard his name I have really only seen one or two images of his so i have decided to take another look. I find in different ways that his work can relate to my own. While using found imagery and taking away its meaning the work takes on a life all its own. It questions identity and takes away your ability to really come up with a strong argument for that it means, or what is going on.
During the 1970s, John Baldessari, began gathering B-movie film stills, publicity shots and press material. His work consists of the appropriated imagery in which he paints over blocking out the lips, eyes, wrinkles and spots, or any specific features of a person. In doing so, he obscures the face, which leads the viewer to forge a meaning.
"At a certain point I had these huge folders, each one classified according to a subject matter or genre: people with guns, people kissing, Indians and cowboys falling off horses, getting shot, getting shot with arrows -almost every plot device. Then I cropped the cheap, recycled imagery to give exhausted images new meaning, or at least something other than the original meaning" [John Baldessari in interview with Jeremy Blake, Artforum, March 2004.)
http://www.baldessari.org/
