art is the most general condition of the Past in the present. ... Perhaps no work of art is art. It can only become art, when it is part of the past. In this normative sense, a 'contemporary' work of art would be a contradiction - except so far as we can, in the present, assimilate the present to the past.
Susan SontagVolume depends precisely on the writer's having been able to sit in a room every day, year after year, alone.
Susan Sontag