Jasper Johns Quotes - Page 3

I love drawings, so I've always enjoyed making drawings that exist on their own.

I am just trying to find a way to make pictures.

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.

I never wish for critics.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There was very little art in my childhood.

One likes to think that one anticipates changes in the spaces we inhabit, and our ideas about space.

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.

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.

I would tend to say that I do what I do as well as possible and that most people don't.

It’s almost just a difference of mood as to whether I would describe myself one way or the other. I think I share that experience with most people.

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).

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.