Jasper Johns Quotations

I'm working in my mind.

To me, self-description is a calamity.

To do a drawing for a painting most often means doing something very sketchy and schematic and then later making it polished.

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?

Cubism is an anatomical chart of a way of seeing external objects. But I want to confuse the meaning of the act of looking.

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.

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.

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

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

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.