Quotes by Jasper Johns - Page 2

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 / Artist
Art
Opportunity
Smile
Mean
People
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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 / Artist
Color
Leaving
Names
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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 / Artist
Energy
Grace
Mean
Holds
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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 / Artist
Art
Journey
Confusion
Taken
Paths
Possibilities
Sees
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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 / Artist
Believe
Children
Ideas
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Every artist feels alone and isolated, Friends are very important in terms of all sorts of definitions of oneself. They tell you what you are and what they are aside from the intellectual aspects.
Jasper Johns / Artist
Artist
Important
Intellectual
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I was raised in South Carolina; I wasn't aware of any art in South Carolina. There was a minor museum in Charleston, which had nothing of interest in it. It showed local artists, paintings of birds.
Jasper Johns / Artist
Carolina
Charleston
Raised
South Carolina
Artists
Aware
Birds
Local
Minor
Museum
Paintings
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I think that one wants from a painting a sense of life. The final suggestion, the final statement, has to be not a deliberate statement but a helpless statement. It has to be what you can't avoid saying.
Jasper Johns / Artist
Finals
Suggestions
Thinking
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At first I had some idea that the absence of color made the work more physical. 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 / Artist
Absence
Color
Different Directions
Involved
Notion
Painting
Attack
Directions
Early
Object
Physical
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My experience of life is that it's very fragmented; certain kinds of things happen, and in another place, a different kind of thing occurs. I would like my work to have some vivid indication of those differences.
Jasper Johns / Artist
Differences
Fragmented
Indication
Things Happen
Vivid
Life Work Experience
Different Kind
Occurs
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In the place where I was a child, there were no artists and there was no art, so I really didn't know what that meant. I think I thought it meant that I would be in a situation different than the one that I was in.
Jasper Johns / Artist
Art
Children
Thinking
Meant
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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 / Artist
Civilization
Doe
Vision
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The only logical thing I can think of is that I knew there were such things as artists, and I knew there were none where I lived. So I knew that to be an artist you had to be somewhere else. And I very much wanted to be somewhere else.
Jasper Johns / Artist
Logical
Somewhere Else
Artists
Somewhere
Logical Thing
None
Such Things
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I'm not looking for images, They just appear and take on an interest. Sometimes you look at a thing and it has no interest and then you see it in a different way and it has another meaning. Or something that was of no use will become useful.
Jasper Johns / Artist
Different
Looks
Use
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There was very little art in my childhood. I was raised in South Carolina; I wasn't aware of any art in South Carolina. There was a minor museum in Charleston, which had nothing of interest in it. It showed local artists, paintings of birds.
Jasper Johns / Artist
Art
Carolina
Charleston
Childhood
Museums
Raised
South Carolina
Birds
Local
Minor
Museum
Paintings
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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 / Artist
Different
Thinking
Way
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Sometimes I see it and then paint it. Other times I paint it and then see it. Both are impure situations, and I prefer neither. At every point in nature there is something to see. My work contains similar possibilities for the changing focus of the eye.
Jasper Johns / Artist
Eye
Focus
Sometimes
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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 / Artist
Ideas
Needs
Together
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Sometime during the mid-50s I said, 'I am an artist.' Before that, for many years, I had said, 'I'm going to be an artist.' Then I went through a change of mind and a change of heart. What made 'going to be an artist' into 'being an artist', was, in part, a spiritual change.
Jasper Johns / Artist
Spiritual
Sometime
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Art as a fantasy has been one of my earliest experiences. I suppose a lot of my childhood was a fantasy that involved getting away from things I didn't like. Fortunately it had some relationship to reality so that later I was able to, to some extent, act as I imagined I might.
Jasper Johns / Artist
Art
Childhood
Reality
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This image of wanting to be an artist - that I would in some way become an artist -was very strong. I knew for a long, long time that that's what I would be. But nothing I ever did seemed to bring me any nearer to the condition of being an artist. And I didn't know how to do it.
Jasper Johns / Artist
Long Time
Time Me Long
Condition
Time Long Me
Image
Nearer
Seemed
Wanting
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Make something, a kind of object, which as it changes or falls apart (dies as it were) or increases in its parts (grows as it were) offers no clue as to what its state or form or nature was at any previous time. Physical and Metaphysical. Obstinacy. Could this be a useful object?
Jasper Johns / Artist
Clue
Fall
Kind
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I would like to have insights into things like government, all those big ideas that you brought up that I simply don't have ideas about. I would like to be able to since so many people discuss them, but I don't want to work at them. I don't think my ambition is that strong in that direction.
Jasper Johns / Artist
Ambition
Strong
Thinking
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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 / Artist
Judging
Ordinary
Personality
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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 / Artist
Space
Differences
Different
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In my early work, I tried to hide my personality, my psychological state, my emotions. This was partly due to my feelings about myself and partly due to my feelings about painting at the time. I sort of stuck to my guns for a while but eventually it seemed like a losing battle. Finally one must simply drop the reserve.
Jasper Johns / Artist
Feelings
Gun
Personality
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Object in/ and space - the first impulse may be to give the object - a position - to place the object. (The object had a position to begin with.) Next - to change the position of the object. - Rauschenberg's early sculptures - A board with some rocks on it. The rocks can be anywhere on the board. - Cage's Japanese rock garden - The rocks can be anywhere (within the garden).
Jasper Johns / Artist
Space
Garden
Rocks
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Donald Judd spoke of a 'neutral' surface, but what is meant? Neutrality must involve some relationship (to other ways of painting, thinking?) He would have to include these in his work to establish the neutrality of that surface. He also used 'non' or 'not' - expressive - this is an early problem - a negative solution or - expression of new sense - which can help one into - what one has not known. 'Neutral' expresses an intention.
Jasper Johns / Artist
Expression
Negative
Thinking
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Marcel Duchamp, one of this century's pioneers, moved his work through the retinal boundaries which had been established with Impressionism into a field where language, thought and vision act upon one another. There it changed form through a complex interplay of new mental and physical materials, heralding many of the technical, mental and visual details to be found in more recent art... He declared that he wanted to kill art ("for myself") but his persistent attempts to destroy frames of reference altered our thinking, established new units of thought, a "new thought for that object."
Jasper Johns / Artist
Art
Thinking
Vision
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Jasper Johns Quotes - Page 2

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