“…consciously or not, interest is posed against the great Greenbergian shibboleth quality. Whereas quality is judged by reference to the standards not only of the old masters but of the great moderns, interest is provoked through the testing of aesthetic categories and the transgressing of set forms. In short, quality is a criterion of normative criticism, an encomium bestowed upon aesthetic refinement; interest is an avant-gardist term, often measured in terms of epistomological disruption. It too can become normative, but it can also license critical inquiry and aesthetic play.”
– Hal Foster, Return of the Real, pg. 46.