#against interpretation

[thirdity]

The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art — and, by analogy, our own experience — more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.

Susan Sontag, "Against Interpretation"

#art #experience #reality #virtual #images #criticism #expression #quotes #Sontag #Susan Sontag #Against Interpretation

[papillon-de-mai]

Proust, Joyce, Faulkner, Rilke, Lawrence, Gide…one could go on citing author after author; the list is endless of those around whom thick encrustations of interpretation have taken hold. But it should be noted that interpretation is not simply the compliment that mediocrity pays to genius. It is, indeed, the modern way of understanding something, and is applied to works of every quality. Thus, in the notes that Elia Kazan published on his production of A Streetcar Named Desire, it becomes clear that, in order to direct the play, Kazan had to discover that Stanley Kowalski represented the sensual and vengeful barbarism that was engulfing our culture, while Blanche Du Bois was Western civilization, poetry, delicate apparel, dim lighting, refined feelings and all, though a little the worse for wear to be sure. Tennessee Williams’ forceful psychological melodrama now became intelligible: it was about something, about the decline of Western civilization. Apparently, were it to go on being a play about a handsome brute named Stanley Kowalski and a faded mangy belle named Blanche Du Bois, it would not be manageable.

— Susan Sontag, from "Against Interpretation"

#susan sontag #sontag #lit #literature #against interpretation #proust #joyce #faulkner #rilke #lawrence #gide #hermeneutics #art #a streetcar named desire #elia kazan

[pagunawa]

Susan Sontag, The artist as exemplary sufferer, quoting the Italian novelist, Cesare Pavese (taken from her book, Against Interpretation and Other Essays)

#susan sontag #quotes #against interpretation #the artist as exemplary sufferer #sontag

[marscia]

Lie or no, art has a certain value according to Aristotle because it is a form of therapy. Art is useful, after all, Aristotle counters, medicinally useful in that it arouses and purges dangerous emotions.

Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation and Other Essays

#bookmarks #susan sontag #nonfiction #against interpretation #art critique

[goldenrecord]

#currently reading #susan sontag #against interpretation #i do think though that content based interpretation is still valuable

[lisamarie-vee]

#susan sontag #book cover #against interpretation #1960s

[henriduree]

Zitat d. W. 47

#Susan Sontag #Against Interpretation #thoughts about art

[literarybullshitismylife]

“In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philosopher refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.” - SUSAN SONTAG, Against Interpretation

“It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.” - OSCAR WILDE, in a letter

“Artists do not merely interpret the world to know the world; they do more than interpret: they transfigure the world to see it differently and ultimately to take possession of it on their own terms - even for a short while.” -ANDRÉ ACIMAN, Homo Irrealis

#against interpretation #susan sontag #oscar wilde #andré aciman #essays

[theblackestofsuns]

Against Interpretation (1966)

Susan Sontag

Farrar, Straus & Giroux

#Against Interpretation #Susan Sontag #Farrar Straus & Giroux #Started This Today

[plazticaaa]

Ours is indeed an age of extremity. For we live under continual threat of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed, destinies: unremitting banality and inconceivable terror.

Against Interpretation and Other Essays 

Susan Sontag 

#currently reading #essays #Susan Sontag #against interpretation

[modalities-of-care]

#against interpretation #susan sontag #read outloud #Youtube

[thirdity]

Aristotle’s arguments in defense of art do not really challenge Plato’s view that all art is an elaborate trompe l’oeil, and therefore a lie. But he does dispute Plato’s idea that art is useless. Lie or no, art has a certain value according to Aristotle because it is a form of therapy. Art is useful, after all, Aristotle counters, medicinally useful in that it arouses and purges dangerous emotions.

Susan Sontag, "Against Interpretation"

#art #creativity #emotions #feelings #therapy #quotes #Sontag #Susan Sontag #Against Interpretation

[papillon-de-mai]

Interpretation in our own time, however, is even more complex. For the contemporary zeal for the project of interpretation is often prompted not by piety toward the troublesome text (which may conceal an aggression), but by an open aggressiveness, an overt contempt for appearances. The old style of interpretation was insistent, but respectful; it erected another meaning on top of the literal one. The modern style of interpretation excavates, and as it excavates, destroys; it digs “behind” the text, to find a sub-text which is the true one. The most celebrated and influential modern doctrines, those of Marx and Freud, actually amount to elaborate systems of hermeneutics, aggressive and impious theories of interpretation. All observable phenomena are bracketed, in Freud’s phrase, as manifest content. This manifest content must be probed and pushed aside to find the true meaning—the latent content beneath. For Marx, social events like revolutions and wars; for Freud, the events of individual lives (like neurotic symptoms and slips of the tongue) as well as texts (like a dream or a work of art)—all are treated as occasions for interpretation. According to Marx and Freud, these events only seem to be intelligible. Actually, they have no meaning without interpretation. To understand is to interpret. And to interpret is to restate the phenomenon, in effect to find an equivalent for it. Thus, interpretation is not (as most people assume) an absolute value, a gesture of mind situated in some timeless realm of capabilities. Interpretation must itself be evaluated, within a historical view of human consciousness. In some cultural contexts, interpretation is a liberating act. It is a means of revising, of transvaluing, of escaping the dead past. In other cultural contexts, it is reactionary, impertinent, cowardly, stifling.

— Susan Sontag, from "Against Interpretation"

#susan sontag #sontag #lit #literature #against interpretation #marx #freud #hermeneutics #art

[pagunawa]

Susan Sontag, On Style (taken from her book, Against Interpretation and Other Essays)

#susan sontag #against interpretation #sontag #on style

[breakingarrows]

Excerpts of Susan Sontag's Against Interpretation: And Other Essays (Picador, 2001)

#Susan sontag #against interpretation

[hiddenworldofmary]

pink reading corner and its new resident

#yay yay yay #it will be i think the third non fiction book i read #how insane is that #they just so rarely click with me #book mail #susan sontag #against interpretation #mine #my photos