#critic

Today is such a time, when the project of interpretation is largely reactionary, stifling. Like the fumes of the automobile and of heavy industry which befoul the urban atmosphere, the effusion of interpretations of art today poisons our sensibilities. In a culture whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of energy and sensual capability, interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world - in order to set up a shadow world of 'meanings.' It is to turn the world into this world. ('This world'! As if there were any other.) The world, our world, is depleted, impoverished enough. Away with all duplicates of it, until we again experience more immediately what we have. ↗

— Susan Sontag

#interpretation #art

Don't be an art critic. Paint. There lies salvation. ↗

— Paul Cezanne

#critic #lies #paint #salvation

Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest. It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations. ↗

— Raymond Chandler

#critical #cut #destroys #dishonest #emotions

The use of criticism, in periodical writing, is to sift, not to stamp a work. ↗

— Margaret Fuller

#periodical #sift #stamp #use #work

If you criticise something then you have to have an alternative, but we do have to try and improve things. ↗

— Linford Christie

#criticise #improve #something #then #things

But critics of the war have no reason to regret their views. ↗

— Stephen Cohen

#no reason #reason #regret #their #views

I was a lone duck in a swan-filled pond who criticized everyone. ↗