A pioneer of Conceptualism, Baldessari has worked in painting, bookmaking, video, film, billboards and public art. In the early 1960s, he produced solid-colored canvases with painted phrases taken from art criticism. He then began to incorporate found images, advertisements, and B-movie stills, cropping and juxtaposing them with text to explore relationships between reading and seeing. Integrating semiology, mass media and tropes of art history, Baldessari remains a vital influence for younger generations as a Professor of Art at UCLA.  In 2005, Baldessari was honored with multiple retrospetives at the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung, Ludwig Vienna, Austria, the Kunsthaus, Graz, Austria, and the Musee d'art Contemporain de Nimes, France. That year, he received the Americans for the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award. Publications include the two-part catalogue John Baldessari: A Different Kind of Order, 1962-1984 and John Baldessari: Life's Balance; Works 84-04 (Verlag Der Buchhandlung Walther Konig, 2005).