Quotes from Jasper Johns

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

To me, self-description is a calamity.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it.

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

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

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

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.

Art is either a complaint or appeasement.

I think that one wants from a painting a sense of life. The final suggestion, the final statement, has to be not a deliberate statement but a helpless statement. It has to be what you can't avoid saying.

In my early work, I tried to hide my personality, my psychological state, my emotions. This was partly due to my feelings about myself and party due to my feelings about painting at the time. I sort of stuck to my guns for a while but eventually it seemed like a losing battle. Finally one must simply drop the reserve.

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.