Jasper Johns Quotes on Art

Jasper Johns is a famous American painter, printmaker and sculptor. He is best known for his US flag paintings, targets, and his letters and numbers works. Famous Jasper Johns paintings include “White Flag”, “Three Flags”, “0 through 9”, “Target with Four Faces”, “Corpse and Mirror II”, “Painting With Two Balls”, “False Start”, and “Between the Clock and the Bed”.

Mini biography: Born Jasper Johns Jr. on the 15th of May, 1930 in Augusta, Georgia, United States of America. His mother was Jean Riley and his father William Jasper Johns. Johns never married or had children. He is openly gay and was once in a romantic relationship with artist Robert Rauschenberg.

List of Famous Jasper Johns Art Quotes

I don’t know how to organize thoughts. I don’t know how to have thoughts. Jasper Johns

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. Jasper Johns

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

It all began with my painting a picture of an American flag. Using this design took care of a great deal for me because I didn’t have to design it. Jasper Johns

You draw a straight line and it’s crooked and you draw another straight line on top of it and it’s crooked a different way and then you draw another one and eventually you have a very rich thing on your hands which is not a straight line. Jasper Johns

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. Jasper Johns

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. Jasper Johns

Ideas either come or they don’t come. Jasper Johns

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. Jasper Johns

I tend to like things that already exist. Jasper Johns

I make what it pleases me to make.. ..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. I intuitively paint flags. Jasper Johns

I don’t see any point in simply stating something that is easily available. But then that may just be my own psychology, a kind of negative position. It seems to me that if you avoid everything you can avoid, then you do what you can’t avoid doing, and you do what is helpless, and unavoidable. That seems to me more interesting than any other position at this moment. Jasper Johns

Art Quotes About Jasper Johns

Jasper Johns produces a group of works, and then for years sometimes he doesn’t do much except for his prints and drawings. He has adopted the attitude that unless he feels he can do something that’s new, he just prefers not to do anything. Leo Castelli Quotes

When I stumbled on the horse I went, okay, this can be my Jasper Johns flag. This can be nothing to me because I don’t like horses. I can draw a line through it and make it flat, I can take all the things that I’ve learned in the last couple years and negate painting as much as possible in terms of illusionism, shadow, and composition. Susan Rothenberg Quotes

Jasper Johns US Flag Painting

More on American Pop Art Painter Jasper Johns

How has Jasper Johns influenced your art making? Is he one of your favorite famous American pop artists? Is he more than just a flag? Let us know what you think about Jasper Johns in the comments below.

Related or similar popular artists and celebrities include: Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, Claus Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, and other Famous American Artists.