John Baldessari

Much of Baldessari’s work involves altering movie stills from obscure Hollywood pictures of the 1950s and ’60s. John often crops the original using as little as a tenth of the shot and either digitally gets rid of unwanted clutter or paints right over it. Sometimes he adds circles or bars that look like censor marks or Band-Aids. He covers up obvious emotion and disrupts the image’s environment. The dots remind me of when criminals faces are pixelated so as not to reveal their identity.