Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jasper Johns
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: May 15
Artist
Costume Designer
Designer
Graphic Artist
Illustrator
Painter
Photographer
Printmaker
Sculptor
Augusta
Georgia
Tell
Conveys
Art
Construct
Feel
Constructs
Feels
Participate
Mean
Meaning
People
Usually
Works
Opportunity

More quotes by Jasper Johns

Image
I would tend to say that I do what I do as well as possible and that most people don't.
Jasper Johns
Image
I assumed that everything would lead to complete failure, but I decided that didn't matter – that would be my life.
Jasper Johns
Image
I tend to like things that already exist.
Jasper Johns
Image
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
Image
I have no ideas about what the paintings imply about the world. I don't think that's a painter's business. He just paints paintings without a conscious reason.
Jasper Johns
Image
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
Image
I am just trying to find a way to make pictures.
Jasper Johns
Image
I decided that if my work contained what I could identify as a likeness to other work, I would remove it.
Jasper Johns
Image
To me, self-description is a calamity.
Jasper Johns
Image
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
Image
I love drawings, so I've always enjoyed making drawings that exist on their own.
Jasper Johns
Image
I don't know how to organise thoughts. I don't know how to have thoughts.
Jasper Johns
Image
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.
Jasper Johns
Image
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
Image
Art is either a complaint or appeasement.
Jasper Johns
Image
The thing is, if you believe in the unconscious - and I do - there's room for all kinds of possibilities that I don't know how you prove one way or another.
Jasper Johns
Image
One's range [of ideas] is limited by one's interests and imagination and by one's passion.
Jasper Johns
Image
Merce is my favorite artist in any field.
Jasper Johns
Image
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
Image
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