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Susan Sontag Quotes about Perfection

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Painters and sculptors under the Nazis often depicted the nude, but they were forbidden to show any bodily imperfections. Their nudes look like pictures in physique magazines: pinups which are both sanctimoniously

Painters and sculptors under the Nazis often depicted the nude, but they were forbidden to show any bodily imperfections. Their nudes look like pictures in physique magazines: pinups which are both sanctimoniously asexual and (in a technical sense) pornographic, for they have the perfection of a fantasy.

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

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.

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

And what do I mean by the word 'perfection'? That I shall not try to explain but only say, 'Perfection makes me laugh.' Not cynically, I hasten to add, 'With joy.

Susan Sontag
Mean, Laughing, Perfection
Susan Sontag (2007). “At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches”, p.154, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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