Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art.

The only interesting ideas are heresies.

A work of art encountered as a work of art is an experience, not a statement or an answer to a question. Art is not only about something; it is something. A work of art is a thing _in_ the world, not just a text or commentary _on_ the world.

All aesthetic judgment is really cultural evaluation.

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

Photographs shock insofar as they show something novel.

Strictly speaking, nothing that’s said is true. (Though one can be the truth, one can’t ever say it.)

As long as art is understood and valued as an “absolute” activity, it will be a separate, elitist one. Elites presuppose masses. So far as the best art defines itself by essentially “priestly” aims, it presupposes and confirms the existence of a relatively passive, never fully initiated, voyeuristic laity which is regularly convoked to watch, listen, read, or hear — and then sent away.

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