Artist Quotes by Susan Sontag

The Western memory museum is now mostly a visual one.

— Susan Sontag

In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.

— Susan Sontag

Real art has the capacity to make us nervous.

— Susan Sontag

Art is seduction, not rape.

— Susan Sontag

Art is a form of consciousness.

— Susan Sontag

One doesn't need to know the artist's private intentions. The work tells all.

— Susan Sontag

The history of art is a sequence of successful transgressions.

— Susan Sontag

Art is not consciousness per se, but rather its antidote- evolved from within consciousness itself.

— Susan Sontag

Unfortunately, moral beauty in art - like physical beauty in a person - is extremely perishable.

— Susan Sontag

“All aesthetic judgment is really cultural evaluation.”

— Susan Sontag

Never worry about being obsessive. I like obsessive people. Obsessive people make great art

— Susan Sontag

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

— Susan Sontag

To be an artist or a writer is to be this weird thing - a hand worker in an era of mass…

— Susan Sontag

The writers or artists I write about are not necessarily those I care most about (Shakespeare is still my favourite writer) but…

— Susan Sontag

In the final analysis, style is art. And art is nothing more or less than various modes of stylized, dehumanized representation.

— Susan Sontag

The work of art itself is . . . a vibrant, magical, and exemplary object which returns us to the world in…

— Susan Sontag

The purpose of art is always, ultimately, to give pleasure - though our sensibilities may take time to catch up with the…

— Susan Sontag

Making social comment is an artificial place for an artist to start from. If an artist is touched by some social condition,…

— Susan Sontag

“Interpretation, based on the highly dubious theory that a work of art is composed of items of content, violates art.”

— Susan Sontag

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

— Susan Sontag

When something is just bad, it's often because it is too mediocre in its ambition. The artist hasn't attempted to do anything…

— Susan Sontag

Art today is a new kind of instrument, an instrument for modifying consciousness and organizing new modes of sensibility . . .…

— Susan Sontag

Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To…

— Susan Sontag

art is the most general condition of the Past in the present. ... Perhaps no work of art is art. It can…

— Susan Sontag

If within the last century art conceived as an autonomous activity has come to be invested with an unprecedented stature - the…

— Susan Sontag

In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity…

— Susan Sontag

“As long as art is understood and valued as an “absolute” activity, it will be a separate, elitist one. Elites presuppose masses.…

— Susan Sontag

Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art, mush less to squeeze more content…

— Susan Sontag

Much of modern art is devoted to lowering the threshold of what is terrible. By getting us used to what, formerly, we…

— Susan Sontag

Today is such a time, when the project of interpretation is largely reactionary, stifling. Like the fumes of the automobile and of…

— Susan Sontag

“The concern is that the images to be devised won't be sufficiently upsetting: not concrete, not detailed enough. Pity can entail a…

— Susan Sontag

“In one of its aspects, art is a technique for focusing attention, for teaching skills of attention. The history of the arts…

— Susan Sontag

“Today is such a time, when the project of interpretation is largely reactionary, stifling. Like the fumes of the automobile and of…

— Susan Sontag

Is it the obligation of great art to be continually interesting? I think not.

— Susan Sontag

“Pop art: only possible in an affluent society, where one can be free to enjoy ironic consumption.”

— Susan Sontag

Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art.

— Susan Sontag

The basic unit for contemporary art is not the idea, but the analysis of and extension of sensations.

— Susan Sontag

All great art contains at its center contemplation, a dynamic contemplation.

— Susan Sontag

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

— Susan Sontag

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

— Susan Sontag