Notes on Susan Sontag.

Notes on Susan Sontag (1933 - 2004)

American author, art critic, political activist and leading commentator on contemporary culture. Sontag viewed herself as writing 'meta-criticism' (a criticism of criticism) in which she wanted to explore theories and assumptions underlying specific judgments and taste. Over four decades, Sontag wrote four novels, a plethora of essays and a volume of short stories and was also an occasional filmmaker, playwright and theater director.

It is impossible in to cover all of her work, so we have decided to focus on a few of her best know and most influential works relating to art and cultural criticism.  These include 'Against Interpretation' and 'Notes on Camp' from her first collection of essays published in 1966 and the collection of essays titled 'On Photography' published in 1977.

Against Interpretation. 1966

"In place of hermeneutics [study of the theory and practice of interpretation] we need an erotics of art". By erotics of art, Sontag is referring the bodily and sensory experience of art.

 Against Interpretation, is a collection of Sontag’s Essay’s published in 1966. The first essay in the book, Against Interpretation, was a critique on the idea of critique. It’s a beautifully written argument for a sensibility towards works of Art. The idea of a sensibility towards art is a thread that runs through much of Sontag’s writing and relates to the embodied experience of art. Her powerful statement “intellect is the revenge against art” catalyses her ideas surrounding form and content as a way of interpreting and translating art works. Form relating to the notion of sensibilities, feeling and experience. Where as the content Sontag is referring to is that of an intellectualization of art. In a way Sontag is arguing that this intellectualization is in addition to a work of art. It is this unnecessary add on that ultimately detracts from the sensibilities of an artwork. Sontag claims that this form of interpretation "makes art manageable and conformable". In response to this traditional and high brow approach to viewing art, she drew attention to and embraced a great deal of artwork of the time as fleeing from interpretation through parody, abstraction, purely decorative art and pop-art, where there was either no content or the content was so blatantly obvious.

Sontag was against advanced capitalism and the resulting culture of excess and overproduction that was rapidly growing at the time. She believed that in such a society it was important to recover our senses and for commentary on art to make works more real and provide a more immediate experience.  Sontag termed this concept 'Transparency' and describes it as "experiencing the luminousness of the thing itself, of things being what they are".   She claimed that interpretation creates "a shadow world of meanings" which hinders the process of embodied experience and removes the audience from what is real.

Sontag also alludes to a connection between translation and interpretation, as a discrepancy between the clear meaning of the text and the demands of the (later readers).  It is the discrepancy between the original and the derivative that Sontag is arguing against. It is this form of translation that relates to the oversimplification and manageability of manageability of art that requires a more visceral and literary interpretation.

Notes on Camp, 1964

Notes on Camp is recognised as one of the earliest attempts to illuminate a gay sensibility through 53 points covering what constitutes camp taste, it's origins and even it's rules. 

It led to the term 'camp' being used in an aesthetic sense and becoming mainstream.

Sontag describes a logic of the camp sensibility as a consistently aesthetic experience of the world - where 'style' reigns over 'content,' and 'aesthetics' over 'morality'.  She carefully outlines key elements (conscious that a sensibility can not be broken down into a simple system) as including naivety, playfulness, irony, theatricalization, stylization, artifice and extravagance.  She does not necessarily claim that camp taste is homosexual taste, yet she does recognise an affinity and overlap between the two.

Sontag argues that the sensibility of high culture has no monopoly upon refinement and the essay sparked a growth in art criticism of what were considered to be low-brow fields such as film and rock music.

On Photography 1977, (National Book Critics Circle award for criticism  1977)

On Photography has fallen into the rhetorical tool kit for many contemporary thinkers and philosophers on and surrounding the realm of photography.

Advancements in camera technology, have lead to a “democratization of life experience by translating it into images”.  In other words life is no longer experiences, but voids that are filled with images.

The immediacy of photography allows it to become the ideal arm of consciousness. A tool for documenting and capturing the present.

Sontag describes a culture of excess in relation to photography and the consumption of images. “the taking of photographs has set up a chronic voyeuristic relation to the world which levels the meaning of all events”.

In conclusion.

We found this little obituary for susan. We're not to sure how it sits amongst her illustrious career but it certainly illuminates the Human side of and incredible intellectual. 

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n06/terry-castle/desperately-seeking-susan 

Caitlin & Tor.