Jasper Johns Quotes

I assumed that everything would lead to complete failure, but I decided that didn't matter – that would be my life.

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.

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.

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 party 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.

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.

Art is either a complaint or appeasement.

Old art offers just as good a criticism of new art as new art offers of old.

I don't want my work to be an exposure of my feelings.