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I tend to like things that already exist.

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
Tend
Exist
Already
Things
Like

More quotes by Jasper Johns

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I am not strong on perfection.
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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One's range [of ideas] is limited by one's interests and imagination and by one's passion.
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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I think a painting should include more experience than simply intended statement.
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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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To me, self-description is a calamity.
Jasper Johns
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I decided that if my work contained what I could identify as a likeness to other work, I would remove it.
Jasper Johns
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Whatever I do seems artificial and false, to me.
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 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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Old art offers just as good a criticism of new art as new art offers of old.
Jasper Johns
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It's simple, you just take something and do something to it, and then do something else to it. Keep doing this, and pretty soon you've got something.
Jasper Johns
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Art is either a complaint or appeasement.
Jasper Johns
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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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Merce is my favorite artist in any field.
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 am just trying to find a way to make pictures.
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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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