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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
Idea
May
Ideas
Exists
Meaning
Painting

More quotes by Jasper Johns

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I tend to like things that already exist.
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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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'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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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 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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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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One likes to think that one anticipates changes in the spaces we inhabit, and our ideas about space.
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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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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I love drawings, so I've always enjoyed making drawings that exist on their own.
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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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 am not strong on perfection.
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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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 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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Merce is my favorite artist in any field.
Jasper Johns