Once, I made a kind of sculpture of a flag in bronze: it was an edition of three, I think. One of them was given on some occasion to President Kenned… - Jasper Johns
" "Once, I made a kind of sculpture of a flag in bronze: it was an edition of three, I think. One of them was given on some occasion to President Kennedy. I became very upset that this was happening. It was given on Flag Day! (he laughs). It seemed to me to be such a terrible thing to happen. I complained bitterly to my very good friend John Cage, [the composer]. He said: "Don't let it worry you. Just consider it as a pun on your work". (he laughs).
About Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns, Jr. (born May 15, 1930, in Augusta, Georgia) is a contemporary artist; painter and printer. He was a close friend of Robert Rauschenberg, with which he shared studio and exchanged intensively ideas and inventions for some years. The two were also closely befriended with the composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham.
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Additional quotes by Jasper Johns
What is meant by "the representation of space"? What distinguishes one representation from another? Does this mean "how does one see that one thing is not another thing?" What constitutes a change of focus?.. .What about "another way of establishing (?) "thingness"? "Something" can be either one thing or another (without turning the rabbit on its side)..
Merce [Cunningham] is my favorit artist in any field. Sometimes I'm pleased by the complexity of a work I paint. By the fourth day I realize it's simple. Nothing Merce [Cunningham] does [choreography for dance] is simple. Everything has a fascinating richness and multiplicity of direction. [Jasper Johns did a lot of décors for :Merce Cunningham, as Robert Rauschenberg did and Frank Stella,]
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He Robert Rauschenberg was a kind of enfant terrible at the time [around 1960] and I thought of him as an accomplished professional. He’d already had a number of shows, knew everybody, had been to Black Mountain College in South Carolina, working with all those avant-garde people.. ..Rauschenberg focused very much on working. I was prepared to do that, too. He was also involved with Merce Cunningham dance group and totally unconcerned with his success, in the cliché term. All of the activity had a lively quality, quite separate from any commercial situation.. ..[Rauschenberg moved into a loft in Jaser John's building and they very closely worked together for a couple of years]. You get a lot by doing. It's very important for a young artist to see how things are done. The kind of exchange we had was stronger than talking. If you do something then I do something then you do something, it means more than what you say.