Checking in................................

 .............................with Jasper Johns:

Three Flags            1958

Target      1961

Between the clock and the bed            1989

Scent              1975-76

False Start    1959

Bread     1969

Dancers on a Plane     1981

0 through 9    1961

Map              1961

Flag above white     1955

Target           1955

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.

I made the flags and targets to open men's eyes.. ..[they] were both things - which are seen and not looked at - examined.

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 assumed that everything would lead to complete failure, but I decided that didn't matter – that would be my life. 

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 confusion, or a freedom.

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