Jasper Johns on artists

This is taken from a recent post on Makoto Fujimura’s Refractions blog.

The aim of an artist as a creative individual, Jasper Johns suggested recently, is to do ‘something a little more worthwhile than oneself.’…To be worth more, you would need to change in a fundamental way — change your life — or, at the least, experience change and become a channel for its communication.

The quote was taken from a Richard Shiff essay for the Gray Exhibit catalog. Fujimura correctly notes how this humble (and, I would add, charitable) approach to art-making flies in the face of the egotism found in today’s art world. He then goes on to laud humility as a way to open up new vistas of creativity for an artist.

Image from Wikipedia.