Caline Aoun
New Paintings
13 Apr — 13 May 2006

The Best Way to do Art

A young artist in art school used to worship the paintings of Cézanne. He looked at and studied all the books he could find on Cézanne and copied all the reproductions of Cézanne's work he found in the books.

He visited a museum and for the first time saw a real Cézanne painting. He hated it. It was nothing like the Cézanne's he has studied in the books. From that time on, he made all of his paintings the sizes of paintings reproduced in books and he painted them in black and white. He also printed captions and explanations on the paintings as in books. Often he just used words.

And one day he realized that very few people went to art galleries and museums but many people looked at books and magazines as he did, and they got them through the mail as he did.

Moral: it's difficult to put a painting in a malbox.

From: John Baldassari: Ingres and Other Parables
Konrad Fischer, Dusseldorf, Oct 8 - 22 1971