107 Quotes by Jasper Johns

I would like to have insights into things like government, all those big ideas that you brought up that I simply don't have ideas about. I would like to be able to since so many people discuss them, but I don't want to work at them. I don't think my ambition is that strong in that direction.

One wants one's work to be the world, but of course it's never the world. The work is in the world; it never contains the whole thing.

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.

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

In the place where I was a child, there were no artists and there was no art, so I really didn't know what that meant. I think I thought it meant that I would be in a situation different than the one that I was in.

Everybody 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.

There may or may not be an idea, and the meaning may just be that the painting exists.

Merce is my favorite artist in any field,

The thing is, if you believe in the unconscious – and I do – there’s room for all kinds of possibilities that I don’t know how you prove one way or another.