“What the overemphasis on the idea of content entails is the perennial, never consummated project of interpretation. And, conversely, it is the habit of approaching works of art in order to interpret them that sustains the fancy that there really is such a thing as the content of a work of art.”

http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/everett/.

Source: 1940's, Beyond the Aesthetics (1946), p. 38

Source: 1940s, Beyond the Aesthetics' (1946), pp. 36-37

Part 3, Chapter 18 (p. 215)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

"Culture High and Dry" (1984), p. 14
The Culture We Deserve (1989)
Context: Scholarship has yielded to the irresistible pull that science exerts on our minds by its self-confidence and the promise of certified knowledge. But, to repeat, the objects of culture are not analyzable, not graspable by the geometric mind. Great works of art are great by virtue of being syntheses of the world; they qualify as art by fusing form and contents into an indivisible whole; what they offer is not "discourse about," nor a cipher to be decoded, but a prolonged incitement to finesse. So it is paradoxical that our way of introducing young minds to such works should be the way of scholarship.

The Life and Writings of Joseph Mazzini (1864), p. vii
Context: Art does not imitate, but interpret. It searches out the idea lying dormant in the symbol, in order to present the symbol to men in such form as to enable them to penetrate through it to the idea. Were it otherwise, what would be the use or value of art?

Source: 1969 - 1980, In: "Ellsworth Kelly: Works on Paper," 1987, pp. 9-10 : 'Notes from 1969'

Source: Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966), p. 7

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