“Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art. ”
― Susan Sontag
(via Corpsey)
successor to Thinkige Kru whose feed doesn't seem to be working properly for reasons unknown - the old blog + archive remains here https://thinkigekru.blogspot.com/ -^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^vintage thoughts from others, vintage thoughts from me - varying degrees of profundity - thoughts quoted for the turn of thought / phrase rather than for truth value - quoted not necessarily because i agree with them or approve of them - i don't necessarily agree with my own past thinkiges!
Audio musicam ergo sum Music supplies us with a first clue. What part of me hears music when I listen to it? My body trembles, dances, kick...
That whole essay is just wall-to-wall quotables: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54889e73e4b0a2c1f9891289/t/564b6702e4b022509140783b/1447782146111/Sontag-Against+Interpretation.pdf
ReplyDeleteIt's just an amazing essay, isn't it? There's a couple of other really killer ones in the collection of the same title. By the time I read it I had already formulated similar sorts of views about music and arts criticism (how reductive it was to convert things into messages, statements, even "communication" is a limited way to think of art) with a bit of help from Monsieur Roland Barthes. So when I read Against Interpretation, the feeling was less revelation and more annoyance that someone had put across these points with such punch and eloquence more than 2 decades earlier.
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