Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns
Jasper Johnsis an American painter and printmaker...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPop Artist
Date of Birth15 May 1930
CityAugusta, GA
CountryUnited States of America
bad consider extreme good interest might ways work
What you might consider a bad work can be of extreme interest to an artist in ways which are not about its being a good or bad.
humor work
I wish there were more humor in my work than I see in it.
knew none somewhere
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.
art aware interest local minor museum paintings raised south
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.
change mind sometime
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.
certain experience indication kinds life vivid work
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.
Do something, do something to that, and then do something to that.
course interpret picture work
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.
absence attack early involved notion object work
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.
bring condition image knew nearer seemed time wanting
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.
art artist mind
I'm working in my mind.
self-esteem self description
To me, self-description is a calamity.
mean drawing painting
To do a drawing for a painting most often means doing something very sketchy and schematic and then later making it polished.
fall kind clue
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?