“Art today is a new kind of instrument, an instrument for modifying consciousness and organizing new modes of sensibility.”

"One culture and the new sensibility", p. 296
Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966)
Context: Art today is a new kind of instrument, an instrument for modifying consciousness and organizing new modes of sensibility. And the means for practicing art have been radically extended.... Painters no longer feel themselves confined to canvas and paint, but employ hair, photographs, wax, sand, bicycle tires, their own toothbrushes and socks. Musicians have reached beyond the sounds of the traditional instruments to use tampered instruments and (usually on tape) synthetic sounds and industrial noises.