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Susan Sontag Quotes about Art - Page 3

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Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world -- in order to set up a shadow world of

Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world -- in order to set up a shadow world of ''meanings.''

Art, Revenge, Order

In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.

Art, Real, Criticism

Evergreen Review Dec. 1964

The idea of content in art is today merely a hindrance, a nuisance, a subtle or not so subtle philistinism.

Art, Ideas, Nuisance

As industrialization provided social uses for the operations of the photographer, so the reaction against these uses reinforced the self-consciousness of photography-as-art.

Photography, Art, Self

Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.9, Macmillan

Self-exposure is commendable in art only when it is of a quality and complexity that allows other people to learn about themselves from it.

Art, Self, People

Susan Sontag (2013). “Against Interpretation and Other Essays”, p.150, Penguin UK

In contrast to the asexual chasteness of official communist art , Nazi art is both prurient and idealizing. A utopian aesthetics (physical perfection; identity as a biological given) implies an ideal eroticism: sexuality converted into the magnetism of leaders and the joy of followers. The fascist ideal is to transform sexual energy into a "spiritual" force, for the benefit of the community.

Spiritual, Art, Perfection

Susan Sontag (1983). “A Susan Sontag reader”, Vintage

Camp is art that proposes itself seriously, but cannot be taken altogether seriously because it is 'too much.

Art, Taken, Too Much

Susan Sontag (2014). “A Susan Sontag Reader”, p.169, Macmillan

[T]he visibility of styles is itself a product of historical consciousness. ... The very notion of "style" needs to be approached historically. Awareness of style as a problematic and isolable element in a work of art has emerged in the audience for art only at certain historical moments - as a front behind which other issues, ultimately ethical and political, are being debated.

Art, Issues, Political

To us, the difference between the #‎ photographer as an individual eye and the photographer as an objective recorder seems fundamental, the difference often regarded, mistakenly, as separating photography as art from #‎ photography as document. But both are logical extensions of what photography means: note-taking on, potentially, everything in the world, from every possible angle.

Photography, Art, Mean

Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.152, Macmillan

In a culture whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of energy and sensual capability, interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.

Art, Revenge, Sensual

Susan Sontag (2014). “A Susan Sontag Reader”, p.149, Macmillan

Interpretation, based on the highly dubious theory that a work of art is composed of items of content, violates art. It makes art into an article for use, for arrangement into a mental scheme of categories.

Art, Criticism, Dubious

Susan Sontag (1983). “A Susan Sontag reader”, Vintage

Art today is a new kind of instrument, an instrument for modifying consciousness and organizing new modes of sensibility . . . . Artists have had to become self-conscious aestheticians: continually challenging their means, their materials and methods.

Art, Mean, Self

Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art, mush less to squeeze more content out of the work than is already there. Our task is to cut back on content so we can see the thing at all. The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art - and, by analogy, our own experience - more, rather than less, real to us.

Art, Real, Cutting

Art is not only about something; it is something. A work of art is a thing in the world, not just a text or commentary on the world.

Art, World, Commentary

Susan Sontag (1983). “A Susan Sontag reader”, Vintage

... one of art photography's most vigorous enterprises--[is] concentrating on victims, on the unfortunate--but without the compassionate purpose that such a project is expected to serve.

Photography, Art, Purpose

Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.32, Macmillan

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