Naomi Ocean

Contemporary Art Studio

"Against Interpretation" in Memory of Susan Sontag

..."Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world." ... Sontag writes in her essay "Against Interpretation."

..."Her strong opinions about film, photography, literature, painting, theater, and politics were grounded neither in original scholarship nor theoretical rigor; and her "taste"- an old-fashioned term she was unafraid to brandish- could be erratic as she strove to avoid modernist and pop orthodoxies. Her avant-garde persona seemed to require keeping a distance from middle-class conventions, especially those of her native country." ...

…"In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine 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." ... …"Interpretation, based on the highly dubious theory that a work of art is composed of items of content, violates art. It makes art into an article for use, for arrangement into a mental scheme of categories." ...
…"The flight from interpretation seems particularly a feature of modern painting. Abstract painting is the attempt to have, in the ordinary sense, no content; since there is no content, there can be no interpretation. Pop Art works by the opposite means to the same result; using a content so blatant, so "what it is," it, too, ends by being uninterpretable." ... ("Against Interpretation," Susan Sontag)

"Against Interpretation" Gallery