Jasper Johns Quotes

As one gets older one sees many more paths that could be taken. Artists sense within their own work that kind of swelling of possibilities, which may seem a freedom or a confusion.

Bend color names which should be made of neon or copper tubing. Place an object on a surface - trace the object - then bend the object - leaving some part of it attached.

To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist.

Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it.

One night I dreamed that I painted a large American flag, and the next morning I got up and I went out and bought the materials to begin it.

When something is new to us, we treat it as an experience. We feel that our senses are awake and clear. We are alive.

I assumed that everything would lead to complete failure, but I decided that didn't matter – that would be my life.

One works without thinking how to work.

It's simple, you just take something and do something to it, and then do something else to it. Keep doing this, and pretty soon you've got something.

Art is either a complaint or appeasement.

I have no ideas about what the paintings imply about the world. I don't think that's a painter's business. He just paints paintings without a conscious reason.

I have meant what I have done. Or I have often meant what I have done. Or I have sometimes meant what I have done. Or I have tried to mean what I was doing.

Early on I was very involved with the notion of the painting as an object and tended to attack that idea from different directions.

I tend to like things that already exist.

I don't want my work to be an exposure of my feelings.

Intention involves such a small fragment of our consciousness and of our mind and of our life.

When you work you learn something about what you are doing and you develop habits and procedures out of what you're doing.

To do a drawing for a painting most often means doing something very sketchy and schematic and then later making it polished.

One's range [of ideas] is limited by one's interests and imagination and by one's passion.

One likes to think that one anticipates changes in the spaces we inhabit, and our ideas about space.

I don't know how to organise thoughts. I don't know how to have thoughts.

The thing is, if you believe in the unconscious - and I do - there's room for all kinds of possibilities that I don't know how you prove one way or another.

To me, self-description is a calamity.

Everybody is of course free to interpret the work in his own way. I think seeing a picture is one thing and interpreting it is another.

Whatever I do seems artificial and false, to me.

Most of the power of painting comes through the manipulation of space... but I don't understand that.

Cubism is an anatomical chart of a way of seeing external objects. But I want to confuse the meaning of the act of looking.

One wants one's work to be the world, but of course it's never the world. The work is in the world; it never contains the whole thing.

There was very little art in my childhood.

Generally, I am opposed to painting which is concerned with conceptions of simplicity. Everything looks busy to me.

Old art offers just as good a criticism of new art as new art offers of old.

There may or may not be an idea, and the meaning may just be that the painting exists.

I am not strong on perfection.

I think a painting should include more experience than simply intended statement.

It’s almost just a difference of mood as to whether I would describe myself one way or the other. I think I share that experience with most people.

I'm not sure what 'coming out right' means. It often means that what you do holds a kind of energy that you wouldn't just put there, that comes about through grace of some sort.

I would tend to say that I do what I do as well as possible and that most people don't.

I'm especially interested in the music of John Cage... I would like to do some experimenting with the relationship between his freeform sound and free-form art.

I love drawings, so I've always enjoyed making drawings that exist on their own.

Merce is my favorite artist in any field.

Working is very important to me. Probably because as a child I was taught that work was good. I don’t believe it intellectually but I identify with that idea. So it’s probably just like a habit.

Put a lot of paint & a wooden ball or other object on a board. Push to the other end of the board. Use this in a painting. - ruler on board.

I am just trying to find a way to make pictures.

Every artist feels alone and isolated, Friends are very important in terms of all sorts of definitions of oneself. They tell you what you are and what they are aside from the intellectual aspects.

I never wish for critics.

A picture ought to be looked at the same way you look at a radiator.

I decided that if my work contained what I could identify as a likeness to other work, I would remove it.

I feel that works of art are an opportunity for people to construct meaning, so I don't usually tell what they mean. It conveys to people that they have to participate.

My work is largely concerned with relations between seeing and knowing, seeing and saying, seeing and believing.

I'm working in my mind.