Tiger (Orange) and Trainer: With Three Figures (Red, Yellow, Blue), 2004

For your work Somewhere Behind Almost Right and Not Quite (With Orange), you used film stills from movies. What's the idea behind that?

When I first started using film stills, it was just because they were cheaply available. And what I was interested in was what you would call a profound imagery. It didn't necessarily have to be from film, it could also be from a photo album or on the street or in the newspaper. In other words, it would be imagery that's out in the world, and then you adapt it to your own ways. It's like words in a dictionary: you just use them, rather than make up your own words.
By that time, I was living in Los Angeles, where the movies are made. I found a place where film stills could be bought very cheaply. But I actually mixed them as well with photographs from newspapers. Then I realized that the movie stills fell into categories. Of course that seems obvious: the ones with guns would mean violence, people kissing would be love and so on. In the end, they're all clichés. I found the attempt particularly appealing to put some meaning back into something that has been completely emptied of meaning. It's almost like Dr. Frankenstein [laughs]. You try to make something come alive again, but it's never going to be alive as it was before. That's not a bad metaphor.

You made a series of works with photographs printed on canvas.

The dominant movement when I gave up painting was Abstract Expressionism. And the normal complaint you hear is that a child could paint like that. I just got tired of that, and so I thought, why not give people what they want? To me, it seemed the most obvious thing would be photographic imagery and text, words that you see in the magazines or newspapers. That would be more in their immediate experience. That's why I started doing that. I put those photographic pieces on canvas because it made them into art. If it's canvas, you don't even have to have anything on it and people still think it's art.

Ulrich Clewing, "It's almost like Doctor Frankenstein": An Interview with John Baldessari

John Baldessari: NOSES & EARS, ETC. - Galeria Cristina Guerra, 7Jun-9Set