Quote

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

Jasper Johns

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Jasper Johns
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: May 15
Artist
Costume Designer
Designer
Graphic Artist
Illustrator
Painter
Photographer
Printmaker
Sculptor
Augusta
Georgia
Decided
Lead
Failure
Didn
Everything
Matter
Would
Assumed
Life
Complete

More quotes by Jasper Johns

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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
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To me, self-description is a calamity.
Jasper Johns
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Generally, I am opposed to painting which is concerned with conceptions of simplicity. Everything looks busy to me.
Jasper Johns
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A-not-complete-unit, or a new unit. The elements in the 3 parts should neither fit nor not fit together. One would like not to be led. Avoid the idea of a puzzle which could be solved. Remove the signs of thought. It is not thought which needs showing.
Jasper Johns
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I am just trying to find a way to make pictures.
Jasper Johns
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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.
Jasper Johns
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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
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I would tend to say that I do what I do as well as possible and that most people don't.
Jasper Johns
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Old art offers just as good a criticism of new art as new art offers of old.
Jasper Johns
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There may or may not be an idea, and the meaning may just be that the painting exists.
Jasper Johns
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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
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Early on I was very involved with the notion of the painting as an object and tended to attack that idea from different directions.
Jasper Johns
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I tend to like things that already exist.
Jasper Johns
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Art is either a complaint or appeasement.
Jasper Johns
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I think a painting should include more experience than simply intended statement.
Jasper Johns
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Merce is my favorite artist in any field.
Jasper Johns
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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.
Jasper Johns
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Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it.
Jasper Johns
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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
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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.
Jasper Johns