Quote

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.

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
Energy
Means
Often
Holds
Comes
Wouldn
Right
Coming
Mean
Grace
Kind
Sort
Sure

More quotes by 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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To me, self-description is a calamity.
Jasper Johns
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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
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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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I love drawings, so I've always enjoyed making drawings that exist on their own.
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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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’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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Bend color names which should be made of neon or copper tubing. Place an object on a surface - trace the object - then bend the object - leaving some part of it attached.
Jasper Johns
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Put a lot of paint & a wooden ball or other object on a board. Push to the other end of the board. Use this in a painting. - ruler on board.
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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Art is either a complaint or appeasement.
Jasper Johns
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One's range [of ideas] is limited by one's interests and imagination and by one's passion.
Jasper Johns
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I am just trying to find a way to make pictures.
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 don't know how to organise thoughts. I don't know how to have thoughts.
Jasper Johns
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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
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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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A picture ought to be looked at the same way you look at a radiator.
Jasper Johns
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Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it.
Jasper Johns