- "To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world – in order to set up a shadow world of “meanings.” It is to turn the world into this world. (“This world!“ As if there were any other.) The world, our world, is depleted, impoverished enough. Away with all duplicates of it, until we again experience more immediately what we have."
— Susan Sontag, “Against Interpretation”
In her article titled Against Interpretation, Susan Sontag expresses that it is erroneous to divide works of art into form and content. As a response to Plato’s interpretation that art is trompe l’oeil (deception of the eye) and mimesis (imitation of nature) and belief that it is useless, Aristotle underlined the value of art by advocating for its cathartic (remedial and purifying) nature. According to Sontag, in the Western understanding of art, due to the Greek theories of representation or imitation, form and content are torn away from each other. While “content” is foundational, “form” becomes an additional accessory. However, according to Sontag, content is “mainly a hindrance, a nuisance, a subtle or not so subtle philistinism,” and leads to a never-ending eagerness for interpretation.
The imitated nature being both material and abstract, brings forth the unity of essence and form. Therefore, the body justifies art creation and controls the condition's progression. The component of the structure, portrayed as the abstract in art, goes beyond being a solely aesthetic object to be gazed at and becomes conceptualized through the connection it forms with content and essence. However, artists are not merely narrators and imitators; they use visual, auditory, and linguistic tools. The field artists gravitate towards transforming content and style into form and conveying it to people. Artists interpret what they take from nature and return it to nature through their works. Even if art is an imitation of nature, it is a presentation of the imitated object that has been explained and interpreted in terms of the subject. Art is the holistic reflection of the interaction man has with nature. Artists reconstruct both nature and themselves within the context of this natural interaction between subject and object.
In that case, as a product of our manners of perception, creativity, habits, and past and cultural accumulations, there are sensory and intellectual connections between us and works of art. The artist’s identity and historical and cultural bearing cannot be considered separately from the form that created the work.
Alongside the harmony, balance, and aesthetic values that constitute the form, the audience also examines the artist’s inner world to establish a connection to their own. This way, the audience finds their dreams through the work of art and reshapes themselves through their manners of perception and reactions (aesthetic, moral, etc.). When a work of art reaches an audience, it ceases to be the artist's creation and can never be the same again. According to Barthes’s approach, the reader can rewrite a text repeatedly. While the reader reconstructs the text, these texts become parts of the artist’s personality and create the artist. Art may be authoritative (divine), but the reader is free; he can hang a work of art upside down or start reading a text from the end.
However, according to Sontag, the interpretation of art is not a cognitive behavior. Interpretation is the hypertrophy of intellect and transforms into “the revenge of the intellect upon art” and “upon the world.” According to Sontag, interpretation “is a means of revising, of transvaluing…” and “By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.” However, they change the text without replacing it and do not accept that they did so.
The object world only transforms into an aesthetic quality and meaning through the existence and perceptions of humans. Berkeley’s statement “Esse Est percipi” (to be is to be perceived) is another expression of the openness to interpretation of the perception of a work of art.
Art is a result of existence and our necessity to become humanized. Not only does human pleasure art, but it also contributes to the world in which they live and transform by producing enough to replace what has been consumed. This way, art takes on a mission similar to that taken on by science and philosophy. Art contributes to the development of the spiritual being by transforming life towards the good and beautiful through teaching the individual aesthetic sensitivity and the skill to question areas of consumption.
The physical being, artistic and aesthetic, identifies with the human’s spiritual being. Since aesthetics is explained through the spiritual construct of human existence by many philosophers, we should refrain from reducing it to a simple subject-object relation. In addition to critical analysis of events, aesthetics include the theoretical interpretation of an ongoing artistic adventure to find the general laws of design and identify creative concepts and their categories.
In fact, regarding aesthetics, maybe it is more important to accept and love a work of art rather than understand it. This description by Plato, regarding Eros and the Beautiful, actually exhibits the form of existence of Fine Arts. Gasset includes this approach, which is also advocated by Plato, in his work titled On Love with the following, “’ Love,’ says Plato, ‘is the desire to procreate and give birth in beauty.’” Art is the struggle to understand the other or to make their inner world visible by drawing the individual out of the cocoon they form around themselves through their manner of perception. Art is an existential necessity arising from these variations in perception and interpretation. A pair of eyes is not enough to see art. A work of art should be interpreted with great sensitivity towards its period, concept, technique, and tone, along with a far-reaching capacity for perception. As Sontag has said, “In place of a hermeneutics, we need an erotics of art. “
- According to this article, it is not right to distinguish art form as form and content.
Plato interprets the art is as an eye misunderstanding and art mimesis (imitation of nature) and art has no value
According to Aristotle art ıs cathartic (remedial and purifying)
According to Sontag, content is an obstacle.
I am not agree with it even if art is an imitation of nature, it is a presentation that has been interpreted and interpreted in terms of the subject of the emulated.
Artists interpret what they take from nature and return it to nature through their works. Even if art is an imitation of nature, it is a presentation of the imitated object that has been explained and interpreted in terms of the subject.
In that case, as a product of our manners of perception, creativity, habits, and past and cultural accumulations, there are sensory and intellectual connections between us and works of art. The artist’s identity, historical and cultural bearing cannot be considered separately from the form that created the work.
In that case, as a product of our manners of perception, creativity, habits, and past and cultural accumulations, there are sensory and intellectual connections between us and works of art. The artist’s identity, historical and cultural bearing cannot be considered separately from the form that created the work.
However, according to Sontag, interpretation of art is not a cognitive behavior. Interpretation is the hypertrophy of intellect and is transforming into “the revenge of the intellect upon art” and “upon the world.”
According to Sontag, interpretation “is a means of revising, of transvaluing…” and “By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, comformable.” However, they change the text without replacing it and do not accept that they did so.
The object world only transforms into an aesthetic quality and meaning through the existence and perceptions of humans. Berkeley’s statement “Esse Est Percipi” (to be is to be perceived) is another expression of the openness to interpretation of the perception of a work of art.
A pair of eyes are not enough to see art. A work of art should be interpreted with great sensitivity towards its period, concept, technique, and tone, along with a far-reaching capacity for perception. As Sontag has said, “In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.