Viktor Shlovsky on art, via Art Spiegelman’s “Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@?*! “ in The Best American Comics, 2009:

The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar,’ to make forms difficult to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged.