Jasper Johns Quotes

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.

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

My experience of life is that it's very fragmented; certain kinds of things happen, and in another place, a different kind of thing occurs. I would like my work to have some vivid indication of those differences.

In the place where I was a child, there were no artists and there was no art, so I really didn't know what that meant. I think I thought it meant that I would be in a situation different than the one that I was in.

In the place where I was a child, there were no artists and there was no art, so I really didn't know what that meant.

I was raised in South Carolina; I wasn't aware of any art in South Carolina. There was a minor museum in Charleston, which had nothing of interest in it. It showed local artists, paintings of birds.

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

I tend to like things that already exist.

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.

I never wish for critics.

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

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

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

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

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

Everyone 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.

At first I had some idea that the absence of color made the work more physical. Early on I was very involved with the notion of the painting as an object and tended to attack that idea from different directions.

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

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.

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

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

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 am not strong on perfection.

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.

Do something, do something to that, and then do something to that.