John Baldessari On How He Found His Art

“I was doing text and photo paintings and paintings solely with text. I had ignored photography for a long time, thinking it was a high school infatuation, but now I had this idea that I would do visual note-taking. I would go out with my camera and take photographs of things that might be information for my paintings. Then I got another epiphany. I asked myself: Why do I have to translate all of this information into painting? Why can’t it be art in itself?” – Los Angeles Times