This scrap of paper has traveled with me a long way. You can see where I’ve traced over the torn writing with a red marker, the lines where it has been folded into an airplane, the scribbles from the backside showing through. A good friend shared this quote with me when talking about a painting I was working on in 2001. He couldn’t remember the order right, so he pulled out a sharpie and scribbled it down instead.

I’ve always been struck by the two-sided nature of Baldessari’s wit. Even though I read  this to be a photographer’s declaration of the “death of painting” in the Benjaminian sense, it remained on my studio wall for years. Only later did I understand it’s more auspicious nature: if you are going to make a painting, you better make an interesting one.