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This video has probably left you extremely confused and wondering, 'what is he playing at?'
John Baldessari is a conceptual artist,master of appropriation and a surrealist for the digital age. In 1970, he burnt everything he ever made as he was embarrassed at 'normal' artwork. He started to put dots over peoples faces as he found it was more unique and recognisable. The meaning behind a dotted image would generally be that the famous person in the image is still the same as everyone else. John Baldessari also took a bad composition photo intentionally and called it 'wrong.' This meant that he was breaking the rules which people automatically have in their minds. We see that the photo is incorrect as us as people can point the things that are wrong with it but, Baldessari's message was why should our work be judged? In 1971 he made the announcement 'I will not make any boring art' and recorded himself writing it until the tape ran out so it would be stuck in peoples minds. He has had many photos taken of himself and called it art and, there's a clip of him moving his arm slightly whilst repeating 'I am making it.' This may mean that art is everywhere and anything. |
This is John Baldessari's wrong photo. As you can see, there is many things wrong with this image. An example is the person has an unclear face, which makes us confused as to what it is showing as well as the fact how he is so far back, so the image has no main focus point. The tree and the man are also not placed right in the middle, this was probably intentional to show that everything is not always perfect. John Baldessari once stated: "You don't want anyone to say 'You can't do that!' But you do get a lot of that in New York. One of the healthiest things about California is - 'Why not?' This quote shows us that we can do anything we want as we have personal opinions on whether something is right or wrong. One thing with this image is that it has a triangle which is secretly hidden behind the image. As photographers, we can point these out and it is effective as it makes it a strong picture. |