Sontag – Against Interpretation, 1964

Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modern life – its material plentitude, – conjoin to dull our sensory faculties. And it s in the light of the condition of our senses, or capacities (rather than those of another age), that the task of a critic must be assessed.

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

Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art, much less to squeeze more content out of the work than is already there. Our task is to cut back content so that 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.