Margaret R. Lazzari The Practical Handbook for the Emerging Artist, Harcourt Brace: NY, 1996. 302 pp., 1996, 1992, 1991
"Artist Interview: John Baldessari
"John Baldessari is a conceptual artist, photographer, maker of books, and filmmaker, whose work has been widely shown throughout the United States and Europe. He taught for many years at California Institute for the Arts. He discusses here his own use of imagery and issues of intellectual property.
"I'm not sure if this is the language you would use, but you recycle images in your work.
"Well, when you say "recycle" that does make me a little bit uncomfortable., If recycling is like somebody writing using words that some other writer has used . . . yeah, of course . . .
"I'm perfectly willing to go out and shoot a photograph. But my attitude is that unless you need an image of a particular house, why go shoot another house? For me images are just stuff out there in the world. What makes it art is how they're put together. I think I go at my own work very much like a writer. But all artists are doing that. They are drawing from bits of memory here, from that painting or this priority. "Do you keep a lot of source material? How do you organize and access it? Where does the imagery come from?
"Over the years I've used various kinds of systems: alphabetized, color-coded, file folders and so on. Now I think that my vocabulary of images has grown, like one's vocabulary of words, to the point where you don't have to use a dictionary. I sort of know where things are. My imagery comes from anyplace. I guess. I use a lot of film stills. If I find a snapshot in the street that somebody's thrown away and there's something there I think I can use, I'll use that.
"Technology has made it increasingly easy to use existing images and at the same time we are experiencing increased legal efforts to protect intellectual property rights in reference to images." p. 263
"In terms of intellectual property, I could go either way on that. In one way it seems preposterous, like owning a dictionary and no one can use those words anymore. But if someone were just going to completely lift a whole book or a whole painting I could see some problem with that.
"But art couldn't just happen without borrowing from the history of art. I just think it should all be free flowing, somehow, because I don't know where it ends, you see. I talked about using a photograph of a house. Does somebody own that? And if another photograph of the house had been taken a minute later, would it be a different picture? Or move the camera a millimeter, would it be a different picture? Yes, in fact it would, but at what point does somebody own an image? I don't know.
"The legal system has attempted to define intellectual ownership but actually when there is a dispute in court, the jury makes a judgment call. And one jury may decide one way, and another . . .
"There are interesting implications in some music sampling. There was an article in the New York Times where a rap group had used "Pretty Woman," and the estate of Roy Orbison sued. The rap group won. The decision was that it was a parody. So now I guess if we say that things are a parody, then it's okay. I don't know what the implication of this is going to be.
"I understand that Jeff Koons used parody as a defense in the lawsuit Art Rogers brought against him. And Koons lost.
"I wasn't there but I understand that he lost because he had a pretty arrogant attitude when in fact he shouldn't have lost.
"Your feeling is that his taking was legitimate . . .
"My god, the two things were so different. It gets pretty bizarre.
"You said before that you don't check the copyright status of works that you use, but then you really change them substantially anyway." p. 264
"It used to be in years back that the rule of thumb in the advertising world was that you just flip-flopped the image and that would make it okay to use. I don't know if that was true or not; that was just the conventional wisdom that was around. It gets ludicrous. I just did a piece for the Museum of Modern Art where I'm photographing elements from their collection and I used a very small detail from a Disney film, the Three Little Pigs" - one from of the film! - and there was a two-page contract just to use this.
"I understand that Disney is exceedingly vigilant in protecting their copyrighted materials.
"I have heard, but don't know if it's true or not, that any photograph taken at DisneyWorld is copyrighted. I don't know if it's ever been tested or what.
"You have been careful in the past when you use appropriated images of nonpublic persons in your work. Placing the dots over their faces solved both conceptual and potentially legal problems.
"That's my own summation; I don't know if in fact that it does.
"All this fits with your interest in populist approaches to art.
"I don't think that art has to be defined by money.
"And it fits with your emphasis on accessibility. You mentioned in other interviews that one reason you made artist books was that your students could afford them.
"I just used students as an example because that was my social milieu. I still do things for magazines, or posters or billboards or what have you. What is so great about books, in terms of literature, is that anyone can have a great work of art in their hands. Why can't the same thing apply to visual art?
"I think art making can be reduced to simple communication. Essentially, it's one person trying to get something across to another person.
"You are quoted as saying, "Every artist should have a cheap line; it keeps art ordinary and away from being overblown." Is that perhaps even more important now?" p. 265
"That is another populist notion of mine, tied with ideas of accessibility. But if you mean that maybe cheaper things sell better now - it doesn't matter. It's not that money isn't out there. I think people feel a little ashamed in using it in a conspicuous way and art gets included somehow as something that one really doesn't need, like having a yacht or a second home or what have you. It's not seen by too many people as really necessary. And actually I think I resisted the idea of art for a long time because I didn't think it helped anybody. But then it seems like it does in some way I can't quite figure out.
"It's absolutely imperative that the art one does is the art one believes in. That sounds pretty maudlin but quite often we do the art we think the world want's to see, for whatever reasons, and it may not really. The art that you might really want to do but don't do because people would thing you were bonkers, that's going to come out eventually, so you might as well attend to it right away." p. 266
[photo of the artist 1991 p. 262]
[photo "Sea Creature: Cyclist/Obscured Situation/Telephone/
Money /Drinkers/Boxers/Passerby. 1992. p. 263]