John Baldessari was a major contemporary American artist, a profound and prolific luminary of
the Conceptual art movement. His work is based on images, sometimes his own, sometimes
appropriated from old movies, advertisements, or photographs you might have found on the
walls of your grandmother’s house. His works are collections of disparate elements, where
each has lost its original voice, but when placed together, mold themselves into a strange,
exciting whole where the visual sum is greater than its parts. In certain ways we know what we
see, but what we see has transformed beyond its original meaning. Baldessari pushes us
further into creating a reinterpretation by often blocking out (or adding on) with color the central
features of many of the individual images. Through his juxtaposition, the mundane becomes not
just ironic, but iconic.