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Quote by Susan Sontag

“When something is just bad, it's often because it is too mediocre in its ambition. The artist hasn't attempted to do anything really outlandish.”

Quote by Susan Sontag

Author

Susan Sontag was an American writer, critic, and photographer. Known for her unique literary style and profound thinking, her work spans various fields including literature, art, and politics. Born on January 16, 1933, she passed away on December 28, 2004. more

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“Camp is a solvent of morality. It neutralizes moral indignation, sponsors playfulness.”

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Book:A Susan Sontag reader

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“Images have been reproached for being a way of watching suffering at a distance, as if there were some other way of watching.”

Ifs Way Has Beens Suffering Distance Observation

Book:Regarding the Pain of Others

Source: Regarding the Pain of Others

“And what do I mean by the word 'perfection'? That I shall not try to explain but only say, 'Perfection makes me laugh.' Not cynically, I hasten to add, 'With joy.”

Trying Mean Joy Laughing Perfection Add Make Me Laugh

Book:At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches

Source: At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches

“Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder - a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.”

Gun Murder Cameras Photograph Appropriate Frightened Subliminal

Author:Susan Sontag

“One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious.”

Play Serious Frivolous

Book:A Susan Sontag reader

Source: A Susan Sontag reader

“Camp taste turns its back on the good-bad axis of ordinary aesthetic judgment. Camp doesn't reverse things. It doesn't argue that the good is bad, or the bad is good. What it does is to offer for art, and life, a different - a supplementary - set of standards.”

Doe Art Different Turns Taste Offers Judgment Standards Ordinary Arguing Camps Aesthetic Reverse Axes Art And Life

Book:A Susan Sontag reader

Source: A Susan Sontag reader

“To emphasize style is to slight content, or to introduce an attitude which is neutral with respect to content.”

Attitude Style Introducing

Book:A Susan Sontag reader

Source: A Susan Sontag reader

“Surrealism in painting amounted to little more than the contents of a meagerly stocked dream world: a few witty fantasies, mostly wet dreams and agoraphobic nightmares.”

World Littles Dream Fantasy Painting Witty Nightmare Wet Surrealism Dream World Wet Dreams

Book:On photography

Source: On photography

“Surrealism can only deliver a reactionary judgment; can make out of history only an accumulation of oddities, a joke, a death trip.”

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Book:On photography

Source: On photography

“To patronize the faculty of taste is to patronize oneself. For taste governs every free - as opposed to rote - human response.”

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Book:A Susan Sontag reader

Source: A Susan Sontag reader