Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Inter… - Susan Sontag

Real art has the capacity to make us nervous.

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.

Collecting expresses a free-floating desire that attaches and re-attaches itself — it is a succession of desires. The true collector is in the grip not of what is collected but of collecting.

People don't become inured to what they are shown - if that's the right way to describe what happens - because of the quantity of images dumped on them. It is passivity that dulls feeling. The states described as apathy, moral or emotional anesthesia, are full of feelings; the feelings are rage and frustration.