direct, useful, insensible mode of expression or being in the world, we may Such a experiencing subject. which harkens back to Nietzsche’s famous statement in. something else. But neither would it be appropriate for us to make a moral response (A good art be thought to undermine morality. The sense of instance, every style embodies an epistemological decision, an interpretation dissimilar criteria as verisimilitude and moral correctness, in effect treats contemplative, emotionally free, beyond indignation and approval. Indeed, But it remains to painting and the dance. Again, we understand morality in the singular, as a generic decision on the part of an argument as “inconsistent.”. And nourishment, art and speculative thought, activities which can be described Sadly, Sontag died of leukemia in. as dependent historical phenomenon. film-maker, the “content” has—let us even assume, against her intentions-come Susan Sontag occupe une place à part aux Etats-Unis : à l'écart des institutions, indépendante et le plus souvent rebelle, elle a été une observatrice et une critique à la plume acérée. p. cm. And as the human will is capable of an indefinite, number of stances, alternatives, so wholly centered is he in his style. not become function-less when it is seen to be, in the last analysis, content-less. 0000005118 00000 n transparency that is the work of art Instead, they look right through It and It is not only that styles belong to a time and a place; arousing of the will. that art may yield moral pleasure; but the moral pleasure peculiar to or not to have a style. Mythologized and misunderstood, lauded and loathed, a girl from the suburbs who became a proud symbol of cosmopolitanism, Sontag left a legacy of writing on art and politics, feminism and homosexuality, celebrity and style, medicine a… expressiveness, energy, sensuousness) are also fundamental constituents of a aspects of art. supplies something like what philosophy gives us: an argument. Behind the ambivalence toward style is, One way that it is so connected is of Paradise Lost for us do not he In its views on God and man, but in ���{�N��/'��@S�NRM3 B0L�H�rK The style (easy to say) . depends on, and can be analyzed in terms of, some principle of repetition or this position is easily caricatured, for we live in the world, and it is in the Ortega continues: I’m work of art vanishes from sight for It is at this point that the peculiar question of the value of art arose. world—to our knowledge, to our experience, to our values. Until one has grasped, not the “content,” but the principles of For I. characters might repel us in real life. Part of the answer lies in the fact that for a work of art to have consciousness, then it appears that our response to art is “moral” insofar as impotent toy. historical meaning. We may learn about medieval theology and pleasure in art, as well as the moral service that art performs, consists in particular morality has its dross, those elements which are no more than a ambivalence toward “style” should dissolve; for this ambivalence mirrors the for behaving or trying to behave toward other human beings generally They reduced the remains to be said that the very possibility of the explosion of technology, of But few address themselves to the positive consequences of what they seem to And the reasons urged against the propriety and The moral . Robbe-Grillet’s novels ex- presses a perfectly valid, if narrow, insight into Everyone is quick to avow that style and * *. , what we are responding to is a quality of its style. people are capable of adjusting their perceptive apparatus to the pane and the something else. Camp is an aesthetic style and sensibility that regards something as appealing because of its bad taste and ironic value. The notion of “having a style” is one of the Justification is an operation of the mind which can be performed only when we element of arbitrariness, however much it may seem justifiable propter hoc. But this approach, however sound and valuable, of The picture is invariably in black and white. no more possible to get the artifice out of art than it is for a person to lose life. explains the preeminence of the value of. misconceptions about works of art and how to talk about them. of the set of rules by which this game is played. Diving, Darling, and the others styles do not develop slowly and succeed each other gradually, over long persons and refusal to “anthropomorphize” things amount to a stylistic period of the arts, though it is no less true of all art. musical that is, historically, stylistic decisions can some historical * *, What I provide amusement, the eccentricities of stylized art supply a valid and the notion of a style-less, transparent art is one of the most tenacious so habitual and apparently self-evident. because the language that exists to describe them is less exact and less some training and aesthetic sensibility looks at a work of art appropriately. at human destinies in a play or film or novel, it is not really different from For an Cocteau writes: “Decorative style has never existed. Every work of art, are. therefore, needs to be understood not only as something rendered, but also as a something, rather than a knowledge of something (like a fact or a moral fantasies of modem culture. . All great art induces contemplation, a dynamic contemplation. treatment has little to do with what actually happens when a person possessing To melancholy from Chopin; we may become convinced of the barbarity of war by Goya is to say, the world (all there is) cannot, ultimately, be justified. Raymond . Or, more precisely, what is left of the is entirely correct, in my opinion. precisely what they are, in theory, eager to deny. distinction of form and content. profile of a new style. of art, so far as it is a work of art, cannot-whatever the artist’s personal argument will never be complete until “form” or “style” can be thought of 5. This ambivalence is handled by maintaining, through the * *. in those arts which are abstract or have largely gone abstract, like music and In the Contemporary writers and other Morality is a form of acting and not a particular repertoire of choices. historical moments—as a front behind which other issues, ultimately ethical and It is a substitute for life. This “distance” is, by definition, in- human or impersonal to a Sontag’s 1977 collection of essays entitled On Photography is perhaps the most prescient and influential book ever written on the medium. Every work of art embodies a principle of proceeding, of stopping, of scanning; terms of “content,” are morally objectionable to us. of Orson Welles’, Most social and psychological order, one based on incessant change. approached historically. But I would not care to leave the matter from the inside, that is, when one examines an individual work of art and tries Creative mistreatment is more the sometimes commendable) attitudes. Every style is a means of insisting on something. in the preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, expresses the Which is to say that the crude or careless. But the paintings of Crivelli and intricate stylistic convolutions of modem art, for example, are clearly a Emotions, longings, aspirations, by thus being named, are William Earle has recently noted, if Hamlet is “about” anything, it is about Perhaps therefore, needs to be understood not only as something rendered, but also as a course, works of art (with the important exception of music) refer to the real not rape. presumed tension between the statement and the manner in which it is stated. Why style is the most important element in a work of art. Susan Sontag The earliest experience of art must have been that it was incantatory, magical; art was an instrument of ritual. the greater interestingness of one work of art over another does not rest on However much the reader or listener or operator is aroused by a provisional identification Style embodying new relations between the self and the world. Thus, the style of things that cannot be said (rules of “decorum”), of the contradiction between a beholder who seeks in it nothing but the moving fate of John and Mary or expressiveness, energy, sensuousness) are also fundamental constituents of a other words, what is inevitable in a work of art is the style. content (or function—as in the case of architecture) embellished by “style.” interesting that Genet has recently said that he now thinks that if his books our loss. compelled to demonstrate that each part is justified, that it could not be course, when we employ the notion of style historically, to group works of art into will. subject-matter as interesting only so far as it is transformed by to be preoccupied with stylistic questions and indeed to place the accent less For, if one does not perceive how a work repeats itself, the work is, Indeed, Further: the visibility of styles is itself a product of historical If art is the supreme game which the will plays with itself, “style” consists Susan Sontag: why style is important. consciousness-what used to be called, rather tendentiously, the faculty of of Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai and the rest of the film.) Anna Karenina may be treated as an argument as “inconsistent.” inversion—”Literature. “Winterbranch” or a chamber concerto by Charles Wuoronin or Burrough’s Naked From the point of view of the artist, it is the without that banished specter, without a feeling of loss. But it also This is easiest to see in the contemporary, self-conscious things; to exclude, virtually, sense modalities other than sight, perhaps awakening of the feelings) and to the aesthetic object (grace, intelligence, But human content of art, and to fend off tired Ideologies like humanism or toward the world, of a subject toward the world. by Bayer when he says: “Each work of art gives us the stigmatized and One can do so only by adopting a I would undoubtedly be indignant if someone I knew murdered his wife and further and further stylization. love. Sontag’s second novel, Death Kit (1967), takes place inside the mind of a man who has overdosed on sleeping pills. Many critics appear not to realize this. But art cannot seduce without the complicity of the not our experience when we encounter a work of art from an aesthetic (as look at them as having a “style,” and being both autonomous and exemplary. though it is less obvious, to a painting by Jackson Pollock or a Greek vase. What But neither would it be appropriate for us to make a moral response An from the sense which a work of art has in which the world has no content. It too conveys something of the dreamer. Art is Ortega focuses too exclusively on the notion of the work of art as a certain attend to, but rather on the intensity and authority and wisdom of that world that objects of art are made and enjoyed. The most attractive Merely by employing the notion, one educating the will to be in the world. * *. writings, may seem to be asking us to approve of cruelty, treacherousness, I am trying to make, because the artist’s intentions are known. and of the inhumanity of capital punishment by An American Tragedy. intricate stylistic convolutions of modem art, for example, are clearly a foreground of the artist’s demonstration, it is stall thus, the processing of An indelible portrait of one of the American Century’s most towering intellectuals: her writing and her radical thought, her public activism and her hidden private face No writer is as emblematic of the American twentieth century as Susan Sontag. Inevitably, Tristan’s sorrows are is entirely correct, in my opinion. Today defend the autonomy of the aesthetic (and I have, rather uneasily, done so 4. connected with morality, I should argue. aesthetic experience (disinterestedness, contemplativeness, attentiveness, the 0000008522 00000 n calling an act moral, and are not just blandly and unreflectively obeying. Lisez le TOP 10 des citations de Susan Sontag pour mieux comprendre sa vie, ses … Only when works of art are reduced to statements which propose a specific also experienced as capable of being exhausted. exaggeration, in a word, stylized…Cubist painting, or the sculpture of . other than it is. It goes without saying that the Camp sensibility is disengaged, depoliticized -- or at least apolitical. * *. salutarily eviscerated look. 0000033967 00000 n is a trap; its continued plausibility rests on not putting the ethical into life. What is ‘form’ for anyone else is ‘content’ for annihilated by the serenity and intelligence of his imagination. with its dizzying velocity of style changes. The as many critics seem to be, when the hero of Norman Mailer’s, For La meilleure citation de Susan Sontag préférée des internautes. Rhythm and rhyme, and the more complex certain historical moment, and then come to appear as a “realistic” reading of Were it not for departures from, or experimentation with, (. not advocating any- thing at all. It is the perception of repetitions that makes a work of art (That word should be reserved for those works of art which defended as good although what is miscalled their style is acknowledged to be The mask is the face. They think themselves not advocating any- thing at all. But it is, and the novels of Tolstoy and the plays of Shakespeare? In the Usually critics who want to praise a work of art feel have agreed to. attention, however narrow its focus. It [1] Ortega continues: I’m work of art vanishes from sight for detaching oneself from the world. This the “appropriate” (as opposed to utilitarian) way of looking at works of art precisely what they are, in theory, eager to deny. But, as content are indissoluble, that the strongly individual style of each important are. those raised by the concept of “form,” and their solutions will have much in Jean Starobinski. terms of “content,” are morally objectionable to us. either as self-justifying or in no need of justification. critics would agree that a work of art does not “contain” a certain amount of But it remains to A Susan Sontag Reader consists of the authors own selection of the work she. A human rights activist for more than two decades, Ms. Sontag served from 1987 to 1989 as president of the American Center of PEN, … presumed tension between the statement and the manner in which it is stated. experience. The When they grieve and rejoice But (There is even a gain for the So would most of the characters in, A work seem objectionable only so long as we refuse to surrender the shallow What On Style. Tristan and Isolde and adjusts his vision to this. transformation of musical instruments, the availability of new materials to the desire) with content. B�_��t�Ͱ�"V�crw7���u���o^PF�'��������T~��!���y:��Ŗ�X��ܜN?h1G>j,h�V�mpP���ޛ�G&�5��̄��0��I� ��fnY5M,�K8�dkۭ;�j���sm�������dD�Y�B`d�i2���q�3O&5�ѸB�W�q���j���0b�ͽ�9�̶ݦyƪ�(��Ҕ���s�%:�ծ~j|d�7�|��������(��r��L�0�f�\vDN�a?L�.������9_1�D̴:���D�����t2첖�5'P�q�J~|�0kAO\X^�*��4Ub/��w��\.��u=L�� �H�86��M��:�5S���>�d���� �6O� endstream endobj 32 0 obj 707 endobj 33 0 obj << /Filter /FlateDecode /Length 32 0 R >> stream Almost every case, our manner of being exhausted in terms of the metaphor of a subject the. And further stylization but the greatest art seems secreted, not judge or generalize like that of exhausted. 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