Jasper Johns Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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.

  Jasper Johns

  Simple

  18 Copy quote

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

  Jasper Johns

  Art, Creative, Objects

  Joan Rothfuss, Jasper Johns, Walker Art Center (2003). “Past things and present: Jasper Johns since 1983”

  29 Copy quote

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

  Jasper Johns

  Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

  35 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jasper Johns

  Art, Taken, Journey

  56 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jasper Johns

  Art, Mean, Opportunity

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jasper Johns

  Morning, Night, Flags

  Kirk Varnedoe, Jasper Johns (1996). “Jasper Johns: A Retrospective”

  23 Copy quote

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

  Jasper Johns

  Believe, Knowing, Relation

  4 Copy quote

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

  Jasper Johns

  Ideas, May, Painting

  6 Copy quote

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

  Jasper Johns

  Alive, Treats, Awake

  Kirk Varnedoe, Jasper Johns (1996). “Jasper Johns: A Retrospective”

  22 Copy quote

• I'm not looking for images, They just appear and take on an interest. Sometimes you look at a thing and it has no interest and then you see it in a different way and it has another meaning. Or something that was of no use will become useful.

  Jasper Johns

  Different, Looks, Use

  26 Copy quote

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

  Jasper Johns

  Life, Failure, Would Be

  20 Copy quote

• Sometimes I see it and then paint it. Other times I paint it and then see it. Both are impure situations, and I prefer neither. At every point in nature there is something to see. My work contains similar possibilities for the changing focus of the eye.

  Jasper Johns

  Eye, Focus, Sometimes

  Kirk Varnedoe, Jasper Johns (1996). “Jasper Johns: A Retrospective”

  13 Copy quote

• I often find that having an idea in my head prevents me from doing something else. Working is therefore a way of getting rid of an idea.

  Jasper Johns

  Ideas, Way

  "The changing picture". www.newyorker.com. November 11, 1996.

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jasper Johns

  Mean, Done, Sometimes

  14 Copy quote

• I am not strong on perfection.

  Jasper Johns

  Strong, Perfection, Not Strong

  5 Copy quote

• I’m interested in things which suggest the world rather than express the personality... The most conventional thing, the most ordinary - it seems to me that those things can be dealt with without having to judge them; they seem to me to exist as clear facts, not involving aesthetic hierarchy.

  Jasper Johns

  Judging, Personality, Ordinary

  17 Copy quote

• Whatever I do seems artificial and false, to me.

  Jasper Johns

  Truth, Artificial, Seems

  Richard Francis, Jasper Johns (1984). “Jasper Johns”, Abbeville Pr

  7 Copy quote

• I'm working in my mind.

  Jasper Johns

  Art, Artist, Mind

  5 Copy quote

• Art is either a complaint or appeasement.

  Jasper Johns

  Art, Appeasement, Art Is

  David Shapiro, Jasper Johns (1984). “Jasper Johns Drawings, 1954-1984”, Harry N Abrams Incorporated

  18 Copy quote

• I think through living one's life, one both changes and remains the same. One can see it either way, one can see oneself as being now what one was and one can see oneself as being absolutely different from what one was. It's a trick of thought.

  Jasper Johns

  Thinking, Different, Way

  "New Again: Jasper Johns". Interview with Philip Smith, www.interviewmagazine.com. June 9, 2015.

  6 Copy quote

• One works without thinking how to work.

  Jasper Johns

  Work, Thinking

  Christian Geelhaar, Jasper Johns, Öffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel (1980). “Jasper Johns working proofs”

  21 Copy quote

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

  Jasper Johns

  Space, Manipulation, Painting

  8 Copy quote

• Marcel Duchamp, one of this century's pioneers, moved his work through the retinal boundaries which had been established with Impressionism into a field where language, thought and vision act upon one another. There it changed form through a complex interplay of new mental and physical materials, heralding many of the technical, mental and visual details to be found in more recent art... He declared that he wanted to kill art ("for myself") but his persistent attempts to destroy frames of reference altered our thinking, established new units of thought, a "new thought for that object."

  Jasper Johns

  Art, Thinking, Vision

  "Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968)". Jasper Johns, "Artforum International", Volume 7, No. 3, November 1968.

  17 Copy quote

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

  Jasper Johns

  Feelings, Want, Exposure

  "Abstract Expressionism (World of Art)". Book by Davind Anfam (p. 202), 1990.

  12 Copy quote

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

  Jasper Johns

  Habit, Procedures

  12 Copy quote

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