None of us can ever retrieve that innocence before all theory when art knew no need to justify itself, when one did not ask of a work of art what it said because one knew (or thought one knew) what it did. …

Interpretation takes the sensory experience of the work of art for granted, and proceeds from there. …

What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more. …

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


Susan Sontag Against Interpretation ⬩ Against Interpretation, and Other Essays

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added April 14, 2023 random excerpt