QCQ - AGAINST INTERPRETATION - SUSAN SONTAG
Korean Yun-Woo Choi is an emerging artist who creates incredibly impressive sculptures using rolled up pages of magazines.
QUOTE: “To avoid interpretation, art may dull our sensory faculties. And it is in the light of the condition of our senses, our capacities, that the task of the critic must be assessed.”
COMMENT: A great deal of today’s art may be suffering from a need to flee from interpretation. Though interpretation is not a right or wrong kind of an absolute value, more like a gesture of mind placed in some timeless realm of capabilities. As the text says: “Interpretation, based on the highly dubious theory that a work of art is composed of items of content, violates art.” As a result, we suffer from a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. Interpretation dulls our sensory faculties where we have come to rely heavily upon the critic's attention to content as the value of the art piece. When in fact, what is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see, hear, and feel more. By using our senses we increase our capacity for a descriptive vocabulary for forms.
QUESTION: How do we increase our sensitivity to the art form rather than rely on the critic’s subtext of its meaning?