Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns

Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it.

Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns

To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist.

Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns

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.

Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns

I am not strong on perfection.

Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns

Do something, do something to that, and then do something to that.

Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns

I tend to like things that already exist.

Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns

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
Jasper Johns

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
Jasper Johns

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

Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns

I think a painting should include more experience than simply intended statement.

Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns

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
Jasper Johns

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

Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns

Everyone is of course free to interpret the work in his own way. I think seeing a picture is one thing and interpreting it is another.

Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns

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

Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns

Whatever I do seems artificial and false, to me.

Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns

I often find that having an idea in my head prevents me from doing something else. Working is therefore a way of getting rid of an idea.

Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns

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
Jasper Johns

I don't know how to organise thoughts. I don't know how to have thoughts.

Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns

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
Jasper Johns

I never wish for critics.