“Painting has a nature which is not entirely translatable into verbal language. I think painting is a language, actually. It's linguistic in a sense, but not in a verbal sense. I think that one wants from painting a sense of life. And I think that is true. One wants to be able to use all of one’s facilities in all aspects of one’s life... You may have to choose how to respond and you may respond in a limited way, but you have been aware that you are alive. The final suggestion, the final statement, has to be not a deliberate statement but a helpless statement.”

—  Jasper Johns

interview with Johns conducted in 1975 at Johns’ studio by Yoshiaki Tono, as quoted in Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, Moma New York, 1996, p. 89
1970s

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Jasper Johns photo
Jasper Johns 34
American artist 1930

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Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

Actually both positions are implicit in the paintings, so you don't have to choose.
The Insiders, Rejection en Rediscovery of Man in the Arts of our Time, Selden Rodman, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1960, Chapter 6.
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