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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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Jasper Johns
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: May 15
Artist
Costume Designer
Designer
Graphic Artist
Illustrator
Painter
Photographer
Printmaker
Sculptor
Augusta
Georgia
Exists
Meaning
Painting
Idea
May
Ideas

More quotes by 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
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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
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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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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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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 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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I am just trying to find a way to make pictures.
Jasper Johns
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I think a painting should include more experience than simply intended statement.
Jasper Johns
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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
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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
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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 love drawings, so I've always enjoyed making drawings that exist on their own.
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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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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One's range [of ideas] is limited by one's interests and imagination and by one's passion.
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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Merce is my favorite artist in any field.
Jasper Johns
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Art is either a complaint or appeasement.
Jasper Johns
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Whatever I do seems artificial and false, to me.
Jasper Johns
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To me, self-description is a calamity.
Jasper Johns