Jasper Johns Quotes

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

Donald Judd spoke of a "neutral" surface, but what is meant? Neutrality must involve some relationship (to other ways of painting, thinking?) He would have to include these in his work to establish the neutrality of that surface. He also used "non" or "not" - expressive - this is an early problem - a negative solution or - expression of new sense - which can help one into - what one has not known. "Neutral" expresses an intention.

Sometime during the mid-50s I said, 'I am an artist.' Before that, for many years, I had said, 'I'm going to be an artist.' Then I went through a change of mind and a change of heart. What made 'going to be an artist' into 'being an artist', was, in part, a spiritual change.

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

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

One works without thinking how to work.

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.

Art as a fantasy has been one of my earliest experiences. I suppose a lot of my childhood was a fantasy that involved getting away from things I didn't like. Fortunately it had some relationship to reality so that later I was able to, to some extent, act as I imagined I might.

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

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

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

I wish there were more humor in my work than I see in it.

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

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 confusion, or a freedom.

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

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.

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.

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".

Make something, a kind of object, which as it changes or falls apart (dies as it were) or increases in its parts (grows as it were) offers no clue as to what its state or form or nature was at any previous time. Physical and Metaphysical. Obstinacy. Could this be a useful object?

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

Art is either a complaint or appeasement.

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

There was very little art in my childhood. 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.

To me, self-description is a calamity.

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

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.

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

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.

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 am just trying to find a way to make pictures.

This image of wanting to be an artist - that I would in some way become an artist -was very strong. I knew for a long, long time that that's what I would be. But nothing I ever did seemed to bring me any nearer to the condition of being an artist. And I didn't know how to do it.

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.

I never wish for critics.

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

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.

That's what painting does; it organizes vision in a certain way or suggests that certain things be paid attention to and certain other things not be paid attention to. It functions in that way to a certain extent in our civilization.

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.

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

My experience with life is that it's very fragmented. In one place certain kinds of thing occur, and in another place a different kind of thing occurs. I would like my work to have some vivid indication of those differences. I guess, in painting, it would amount to different kinds of space being represented in it.

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

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

I would like to have insights into things like government, all those big ideas that you brought up that I simply don't have ideas about. I would like to be able to since so many people discuss them, but I don't want to work at them. I don't think my ambition is that strong in that direction.

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