# Quote — Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation and Other Essays

> 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. From now to the end of consciousness, we are stuck with the task of defending art. We can only quarrel with one or another means of defense. Indeed, we have an obligation to overthrow any means of defending and justifying art which becomes particularly obtuse or onerous or insensitive to contemporary needs and practices.
>
> This is the case, today, with the very idea of content itself. Whatever it may have been in the past, the idea of content is today mainly a hindrance, a nuisance, a subtle or not so subtle philistinism.

- Author: [Susan Sontag](https://www.leafyquotes.com/susan-sontag.md)
- Book: [Against Interpretation and Other Essays](https://www.leafyquotes.com/susan-sontag/against-interpretation-and-other-essays.md)
- Page: 5
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Susan_Sontag#Against_Interpretation_and_Other_Essays_(1966)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/susan-sontag/against-interpretation-and-other-essays/none-of-us-can

## More from this book

> Art today is a new kind of instrument, an instrument for modifying consciousness and organizing new modes of sensibility. And the means for practicing art have been radically extended. ... Painters no longer feel themselves confined to canvas and paint, but employ hair, photographs, wax, sand, bicycle tires, their own toothbrushes and socks. Musicians have reached beyond the sounds of the traditional instruments to use tampered instruments and (usually on tape) synthetic sounds and industrial noises.

p. 296 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/susan-sontag/against-interpretation-and-other-essays/art-today-is-a-new.md)

> What is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.

p. 279 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/susan-sontag/against-interpretation-and-other-essays/what-is-most.md)

> The discovery of the good taste of bad taste can be very liberating. The man who insists on high and serious pleasures is depriving himself of pleasure; he continually restricts what he can enjoy; in the constant exercise of his good taste he will eventually price himself out of the market, so to speak. Here Camp taste supervenes upon good taste as a daring and witty hedonism. It makes the man of good taste cheerful, where before he ran the risk of being chronically frustrated. It is good for the digestion.

p. 291 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/susan-sontag/against-interpretation-and-other-essays/the-discovery-of-the.md)