Though the 1960s established California as a surf-n-sun paradise, the state also produced some heavy conceptual thinkers, who drew increasing recognition in the 1970s., who taught at CalArts, quickly became a major figure in academic circles and among his peers. Based in Los Angeles, Baldessari was a rabid, and by 1970 he had abandoned traditional painting altogether, inserting text-based language into his compositions. (, his peer and friend, with his own text-based works, defined a generation of cross-breed painting that looked like an ironic subversion of consumerist America.) Baldessari went on to create compositions from disjointed photographs and collages that, when seen together, read as unified messages. This trick of the mind can be seen today in the work of artists likeand. Baldessari’s 1971 video piece, where he moves his arm in differing gestures and repeats the phrase “I am making art,” played into the idea that there’s no perceptible boundary between art and life—one that circulated throughout the 1960s and ’70s.