Renowned American author and scholar Susan Sontag made important contributions to 20th-century literature and cultural criticism. The idea that style and art are closely related, implying that both are forms of expression that frequently entail removing aspects of humanity for the sake of aesthetic or conceptual purity, is one of her most noteworthy concepts.

Sontag's opinions on this subject reveal a profound comprehension of the creative process used by authors and artists. Comparable to a painter who painstakingly arranges hues and shapes on a canvas to produce an image, this artist eliminates any traces of reality or personal emotion that might be present in a less stylized approach. Beautiful, thought-provoking art can result from this process, but it also removes the humanity and rawness that occasionally give a piece its real power.

Sontag suggests that every kind of expression entails decisions about which elements to highlight or minimize in order to produce a coherent vision when she says that style is similar to art. This type of stylization—arranging elements in a way that feels complete and meaningful, even if it doesn't always reflect the messy complexity of real life—is something that artists frequently aim for, whether they are working in literature, film, painting, or any other medium.

Throughout her career, Sontag herself wrote books like "Against Interpretation" that delved deeply into these themes, arguing that art can sometimes be best understood as art without resorting to unduly cerebral analysis. Numerous conversations about how we view and value creative work in the modern world have been impacted by her theories.