Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)
“.. 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 – for me anyway.”
interview at Johns' studio, Billy Klüver, March 1963, as quoted in Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, Moma New York, 1996, p. 87
1960s
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Jasper Johns 34
American artist 1930Related quotes

“Avoid doing what you would blame others for doing.”
As quoted in Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, I, 36
Cf. Golden Rule

“Criticism is something you can easily avoid by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.”

Source: Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie, 1920, Chapter VII

“Emulation can be positive, if you succeed in avoiding imitation.”
Examples of self-translation (c. 2004), Quotes - Zitate - Citations - Citazioni