Susan Sontag Quotes About Criticism

Quotes about: Criticism

• Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art.

  Susan Sontag

  Art, Revenge, Women

• 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.

  Susan Sontag

  Art, Real, Criticism

  Evergreen Review Dec. 1964

• Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.

  Susan Sontag

  Failure, Criticism, Lapses

• A lot of what I've written in criticism of my lust for virtue - my discovery that I've committed idolatry, making of the good an idol - is open to the charge of being still caught within the dialectic of idolatry. I've made a moral criticism of my moral consciousness. Meta-idolatry.

  Susan Sontag

  Discovery, Idols, Lust

  Susan Sontag (2012). “As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980”, p.330, Macmillan

• 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. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.

  Susan Sontag

  Art, Real, Mean

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

• 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.

  Susan Sontag

  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.

  Susan Sontag

  Art, Criticism, Dubious

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

• Transparence is the highest, most liberating value in art - and in criticism - today. Transparence means experiencing the luminousness of the thing in itself, of things being what they are.

  Susan Sontag

  Art, Mean, Criticism

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

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