In the 1960s, John Baldessari's art underwent a significant transformation, marking a pivotal period in his career where he moved towards conceptual art. During the early part of this decade, Baldessari was still engaged in painting, but by the mid to late '60s, he began incorporating texts and photography into his works, signaling a shift away from traditional painting methods towards a more conceptual approach. This era was characterized by Baldessari's experimentation with blending photographic materials, such as film stills, with text to take them out of their original contexts and rearrange their form, often adding words or sentences to create new narratives or to question the norms of artistic composition. One of the hallmark series from this time is the "Wrong" series, where he paired photographic images with lines of text to intentionally violate basic "rules" of snapshot composition. Another notable project was the "California Map Project," where physical forms resembling the letters in "California" were created geographically near to the spots on the map they were printed, demonstrating Baldessari's playful yet critical engagement with language, image, and their inherent rules and structures (Wikipedia). A crucial act that symbolizes Baldessari's departure from traditional art forms was "The Cremation Project" of 1970, where he burnt all the paintings he had created between 1953 and 1966. The ashes were baked into cookies and placed into an urn, accompanied by a bronze commemorative plaque, signaling a rebirth from the ashes of his earlier works and a definitive move towards conceptual art practices (Wikipedia). Baldessari's exploration during the 1960s laid the groundwork for his later works, where he continued to push the boundaries of art, questioning the role of the artist, the process of making art, and how art is perceived and understood. His innovative use of text, image, and found materials during this period solidified his position as a pioneering figure in conceptual art, influencing generations of artists to come (The Art Story) (Wikipedia).