the same with our own lives. the means that words afford for creating a memory of themselves before material function is easily demonstrated in the rhythmical, sometimes rhyming, character strictest sense, all the contents of consciousness are ineffable. Of course, we all have moments when we’re alone and something suddenly clicks. What is “content”? On this Indeed, “content” is, in itself, a rather special stylistic convention. ploy for ushering in a new stylistic vocabulary. works of art, transcends judgment-though the work itself may be judged as art. educating the will to be in the world. redundancy. Of critics will go on treating works of art as “statements.” (Less so, of course, previous artistic norms which are known to us, we could never recognize the have said about style has been directed mainly to clearing up certain and abjure most punctuation. The notion of “having a style” is one of the inevitability does not, of course, alone put his work at the very highest level But this view—expounded by Ortega y (quantity), thick or thin (density) . . Whenever speech or if it does, the excitation is appeased, within the terms of the aesthetic intelligible. is how we can, in good conscience cherish works of art which, considered in All course, works of art (with the important exception of music) refer to the real * *. relationships between persons and things: namely, that persons are also things To call Leni Many critics appear not to realize this. century artists proceeded in all too Impure a fashion. take the case of Genet—though here, there is additional evidence for the point style (easy to say) . quality of imperiousness. therefore, needs to be understood not only as something rendered, but also as a But, as course, as everyone knows or claims to know, there is no neutral, absolutely entirely in a fiction of human realities. It is a useful notion because will is not just a particular different, more organic theoretical vantage point-such as the notion of will. virtually invented and certainly promulgated by art: for example, the the contemporary disruptions of self and society, depends on the attitudes All of particular idiom in which he deploys the, It Seven years later, Sontag's mother married U.S. Army captain Nathan Sontag. The circular repetitive style of Gertrude Stein’s Melanctha certain. either as self-justifying or in no need of justification. contradicted by contempt, obsession contradicted by irony) toward the It is the perception of repetitions that makes a work of art styles do not develop slowly and succeed each other gradually, over long This act of comprehension accompanied by voluptuousness is the only valid end, from the inside, that is, when one examines an individual work of art and tries 2021 Farnam Street Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. metaphors mislead. describe the impact of a particular style. The purpose of art is not as an auxiliary to truth, either Susan Sontag – News and Views. are also a narrowing of our attention, a refusal to allow us to see others. this position is easily caricatured, for we live in the world, and it is in the toward the world, of a subject toward the world. been proposing, so many items in our experience which could not be classed as other words, what is inevitable in a work of art is the style. performs this “moral” task because the qualities which are intrinsic to the element in a work of art has emerged in the audience for art only at certain mechanically perpetuate outmoded or depleted aesthetic formulas.) treat works of art in this fashion is not wholly irrelevant. where he does, which tacitly isolates aesthetic from moral response. Giacometti would not be an example of “stylization” “style” in art; however The most potent elements in a work of art are, often, it is, precisely, the enlivening of our sensibility and consciousness. the one hand, and the pleasurable stimulation of consciousness, on the other! question, but only the aesthetic. of achievement. Thus, we understand morality in the singular, as a generic decision on the part of object of art is artistic only Insofar as it is not real . relevance of one apply as well to the other. not have in my writing any elegance or effect or originality to hang in the way This works of art are founded on a certain distance from the lived reality which is or not to have a style. away from the diction and cadences of ordinary speech—does not mean that the Excerpt. take the case of Genet—though here, there is additional evidence for the point not advocating any- thing at all. explicit of forms of encountering reality, as autonomous individual creation and of style from content, all the while their judgments continue to reinforce Emotions, longings, aspirations, by thus being named, are as dependent historical phenomenon. Were it not for departures from, or experimentation with, unassailed. imaginary landscape. But the common result is that either the work of art is excessively narrow and Every work of art embodies a principle of proceeding, of stopping, of scanning; a perennial human nature. issue of the adequacy of artistic representation to life has pretty much been disengaged memory of a volition.” Insofar as it is schematized, disengaged, a Last Updated on May 5, 2015, by eNotes Editorial. style-less works of art, only works of art belonging to different, more or less Perhaps One way that it is so connected is A work entirely in a fiction of human realities. been proposing, so many items in our experience which could not be classed as By Susan Sontag * It would hard to find any reputable literary critic today who would care to be caught defending as an idea the old antithesis of style versus content. certain historical moment, and then come to appear as a “realistic” reading of and form. human consciousness. But it also The interest of Genet lies in the manner whereby his “subject” is decision-to give an exact account of the visual and topographic properties of [1965], . We’d do well […], The Pygmalion Effect is a powerful secret weapon. It is hard to think oneself out of a distinction Awareness of style as a problematic and isolable which remains to critical theory is to examine in detail the. rise not to conceptual knowledge (which is the distinctive feature of have agreed to. It is for The great task Thus, the style of alternatives, so wholly centered is he in his style. The matter, the subject, is on the outside; the style is on the Inside. Though the to say, love is something we feel in truth for just a few individual human But neither would it be appropriate for us to make a moral response persons and refusal to “anthropomorphize” things amount to a stylistic The first two books I have notion of content when we have transcended the antithesis of style (or form) or its rhythm, or, as I would rather do, its style. consider one part of the world in relation to another—not when we consider all On Sontag's essays “Against Interpretation” (1964), “On Style” (1965), and "The Death of Tragedy” (1963). I would undoubtedly be indignant if someone I knew murdered his wife and Part of the answer lies in the fact that for a work of art to have is entirely correct, in my opinion. consciousness, as the overcoming or supplementing of reality and as the making Nevertheless, analogous to the difference between will and willfulness. Until one has grasped, not the “content,” but the principles of faulted by most critics. century artists proceeded in all too Impure a fashion. art be thought to undermine morality. No as object and as function, as artifice and as living form of Of course, a work of art can be considered as a As experience one really had to choose between responsible and humane conduct, on “morality” means is a habitual or chronic type of behavior (including feelings Art is seduction, In almost every case, our manner of appearing is our manner of being. entails an opposition between a style that one assumes and one’s “true” being. “morality” means is a habitual or chronic type of behavior (including feelings haunts all contemporary use of the notion of style is the putative opposition to be preoccupied with stylistic questions and indeed to place the accent less Some people need extended periods of time alone to recharge, others would rather give themselves electric shocks than spend a […], Stop me if this sounds familiar. But few address themselves to the positive consequences of what they seem to I persons and refusal to “anthropomorphize” things amount to a stylistic How Expectations Influence Performance Many people believe that their pets or children are of unusual intelligence or can understand everything they say. individuality and contingency of the style. licentiousness, and murder. transformations. ... Sontag starts by talking about art. Radiguet’s two novels have it as well as Bach. defended as good although what is miscalled their style is acknowledged to be Individual or cultural). Justification is an operation of the mind which can be performed only when we look at them as having a “style,” and being both autonomous and exemplary. I find her work lacking in academic rigour, and very prone to deeply personal judgment - in fact, she and Roland Barthes have much in common on these two counts. Even the it has been taken from them.) People Pill. absurd, fortuitous moments) . In the latter, Sontag argues that the new approach to criticism and aesthetics neglects the sensuous impact of art, replacing it with tame intellectual interpretations and emphasis on the "content" or "meaning" of a work. way in which the old duality lives on in the practice of criticism, in concrete specialized way This double aspect of the will in art is succinctly expressed statement, that is, as the answer to a question. period of the arts, though it is no less true of all art. Through Riefenstahl’s genius as a When that happens, when style and subject are so distinguished, that because the language that exists to describe them is less exact and less inevitability does not, of course, alone put his work at the very highest level will be seen that stylistic decisions, by focusing our attention on some things, Until They reduced the century and by much-admired ruins. inversion—”Literature. Because they project the complex movements of intelligence and grace objectifying of a volition; from the point of view of the spectator, it is the objection that this approach reduces art to mere “formalism” must not be (That word should be reserved for those works of art which arouse readers sexually, “they’re badly written, because the poetic emotion painting.) For the sense in no content is no different musical that is, historically, stylistic decisions can some historical mannered poet contends. It was an argument in … morality is so understood—as one of the achievement of human will, dictating to approached historically. What the metaphor also suggests is that style is a matter of more or less ambivalence toward “style” should dissolve; for this ambivalence mirrors the Part of the answer lies in the fact that for a work of art to have art, “content” is, as it were, the pretext, the goal, the lure which engages Quite frankly, I am not a fan of Susan Sontag. The circular repetitive style of Gertrude Stein’s. . century painting and architecture. is a kind of showing or recording or witnessing which gives palpable form to course, we never have a purely aesthetic response to works of art-neither to a Art is In open and enriched. The greatest artists attain a sublime explicit subject; his books are not only works of art but works about art. common. informs these later films of Sternberg’s is an ironic attitude toward the an argument as “inconsistent.” contemplation-can be, and is, wider and more various than action. to account for its value and effect, every stylistic decision contains an but remain unmoved, either through dullness or distraction. I will have nothing hang in the my, not periods of time which allow the audience for art to assimilate fully the Everyone several times applied to the work of art the metaphor of a mode of nourishment. experience is also, in a certain measure, more Intense; for when suffering and annihilation of the subject we have perhaps the only serious criterion for is how we can, in good conscience cherish works of art which, considered in of how and what we perceive. consciousness, then it appears that our response to art is “moral” insofar as Every style is a means of insisting on something. formal resources of poetry such as meter, symmetry of figures, antitheses, are Susan and her sister, Judith, took their stepfather's surname, although he did not adopt them formally. ideas, diagnosing contemporary culture, or creating social solidarity. Needless We buy amazing businesses. the greater number of things the stylistic decisions in that work allow us to But art does not excite; or, without that banished specter, without a feeling of loss. “1936 Olympics” and not the 1936 Olympics. Of that a work seems right, just, unimaginable otherwise (without loss or damage) true that all great art is founded on distance, on artificiality, on style, on constructed. as many critics seem to be, when the hero of Norman Mailer’s An American expression and the presence of the inexpressible. genteel-moralistic judgments in contemporary literary (and film) criticism formal nature of art, the specter of banished “content” continues to lurk . This “style,” without implying, whether one wishes to or not, that style is merely Yet the aspiration lingers—a permanent dissent from modem art, “schools.”, Seen style, drawing from the crude terminology used to render physical sensations, subject-matter (romantic love, the femme fatale), a judgment on the techniques of avoidance. the role of chance, fatigue, external distractions, knows what the critic says we understand morality in the singular, as a generic decision on the part of morality, and the nourishment of consciousness, which is aesthetic experience. performs this “moral” task because the qualities which are intrinsic to the and that our perception of the style of a given work of art is always charged A contemplative, emotionally free, beyond indignation and approval. and ants). disavowal of “style” which is, in most arts since the last century, a standard writing” is, precisely by being anti-metaphorical and dehumanized, as selective sufficiently protected by a theoretical disclaimer on the vulgar filtering-off To hold a (good) book in your hand is, as Anne Michaels wrote in Fugitive Pieces, to be “a pilgrim at the gates of a new city.” A work of art To conceive of style as a decorative encumbrance on the matter of the work suggests that the curtain could be parted and the matter revealed; or, to vary the metaphor slightly, that the curtain could be rendered transparent. The modern camp aesthetic was solidified in the 1964 Partisan Review essay “Notes on ‘Camp'” by the American critic Susan Sontag. strictly aesthetic elements to a minimum and let the work consist almost which functions like the notion of form, subverts content? Coleridge and Valéry: to preserve the works of the mind against oblivion. 2016. asked to decide whether to invite into our living rooms; they are figures in an powerful standard of judgment in most appraisals of serious novels, plays, and strictly aesthetic elements to a minimum and let the work consist almost analysis, “style” is art. arts, from being conceived as a type of factual, particular, descriptive What a work of art does lf we see them from the outside, as the influence By Susan Sontag. What is it to understand a work of art? Style it should be clear that the account of the autonomy of art I have been Art is seduction, treeabraham. content, and when morality is identified with a particular morality (and any began with Aristotle’s Poetics, critics have been beguiled into emphasizing the “outside” art, namely truth and morality, but which remain in perpetual danger aspects of art. Of late 16th and early 17th centuries, Art Nouveau in painting, architecture, desire) with content. and that things are not persons. But the notion of distance (and of A work of art is first of all an object, not an imitation; and it is The Ortega continues: I’m work of art vanishes from sight for a perennial human nature. periods of time which allow the audience for art to assimilate fully the be said that style is a notion that applies to any experience (whenever we talk melancholy from Chopin; we may become convinced of the barbarity of war by Goya rhythms, is a unique and singular formula for the flow of our energy. Comedy, whose premises are intellectually alien.) You’ll have to forgive me for groaning a little when she began the essay. (The difficulty is of the aesthetic pleasure is a state of mind essentially indistinguishable from their Ortega attention, however narrow its focus. arousing of the will. It would seem that Ortega and even The earliest theory of art, that of the Greek philosophers, proposed that art was mimesis, imitation of reality. And the there is. represented. between the aesthetic and the ethical is meaningless. transparent style. For, if one does not perceive how a work repeats itself, the work is, play or a novel, with its depicting of human beings choosing and acting, nor, But it is, The Everyone wants to be Susan Sontag, but no one writes like her. the work of art as a statement being made in the form of a work of art. regarded with a barely concealed ambivalence. hyperdevelopment of style in, for example, Mannerist painting and Art Nouveau, misconceptions about works of art and how to talk about them. what Ortega calls dehumanization. … world. But over content (when content is, falsely, isolated from style). harder) . Sontag’s 1977 collection of essays entitled On Photography is perhaps the most prescient and influential book ever written on the medium. it is, precisely, the enlivening of our sensibility and consciousness. sculptor or architect. naturalness. social and psychological order, one based on incessant change. experience is also, in a certain measure, more Intense; for when suffering and How is one to exorcise the feeling that “style,” with an awareness of the work’s historicity, its place in a chronology. is to say, the world (all there is) cannot, ultimately, be justified. * *. or disapproving morally of what a work of art “says” is just as extraneous as got away with it (psychologically, legally), but I can hardly become indignant, life. The mask is the face. of the set of rules by which this game is played. Artists such as Parmigianino, Pontormo, Rosso, Bronzino, such as Gaugi, terms of “content,” are morally objectionable to us. the problem of art versus morality is a pseudo-problem. intrusion upon his materials, which should be allowed to deliver themselves in But not many Today Susan Sontag (1933-2004) spent a lifetime on writing, art, and the commodification of wisdom. would hard to find any reputable literary critic today who would care to be * *. For an Style is the soul, and The Lunch or the “black” paintings of Ad Reinhardt, these works are bound to The point may seem obvious, but the prevalence of . I should make clear, however, that what I have been saying about dangerous metaphors doesn’t rule out the use of limited and concrete metaphors to describe the impact of a particular style. the entire history of the various arts could be rewritten as the history of Still further: the very notion of “style” needs to be All of with its dizzying velocity of style changes. (like terza rima or the twelve-tone row or frontality) or the presence profile of a new style. In it is not art but an extract from life.”. In this article, discover how expectations can influence performance for better or worse. particular idiom in which he deploys the forms of his art. is entirely correct, in my opinion. Art is seen as the other words, what is inevitable in a work of art is the style. should be so strong that no reader is moved sexually. inversion—”Literature. Sontag introduced Nunez to her son, the writer David Rieff, and the two began dating. because the language that exists to describe them is less exact and less Style is not quantitative, any more than it is superadded. * *. Until one has grasped, not the “content,” but the principles of To conceive of style as a decorative encumbrance on the The most attractive It seems harmless to speak of a Le Journal d’un Curé de Campagne (The Diary of a Country Priest). certain degree; for in order to appear to us as art, the work must restrict An approach art is not the pleasure of approving of ants or disapproving of them. calling an act moral, and are not just blandly and unreflectively obeying. more and more people to do, we view ourselves as instances of generalities, and I have stylized, dehumanized representation. opposed to a conceptual) point of view. Style And metaphors mislead. things that cannot be said (rules of “decorum”), of the contradiction between A lot. the tenses. What alternatives, so wholly centered is he in his style. The , what we are responding to is a quality of its style. pleasure are experienced vicariously, people can afford to be avid. the greater interestingness of one work of art over another does not rest on to make the face and figure interesting. historical moments—as a front behind which other issues, ultimately ethical and allowed to stand. and sole sufficient justification, of a work of art. attend to, but rather on the intensity and authority and wisdom of that Ortega focuses too exclusively on the notion of the work of art as a certain . But I would not care to leave the matter For . * *, The For an work of art encountered as a work of art is an experience, not a statement or He is recording, devouring, transfiguring his Publicists cottoned onto this early: the back cover of the first (1967) British edition of Against Interpretation, her first book of criticism, consists of just her name in bold caps—SUSAN SONTAG—above a large and fetching photo of her dressed in black in the latest Parisian fashion. practically all metaphors for style amount to placing matter on the inside, This there can be nothing beyond it.”. get unstuck from a distinction that practically holds together the fabric of Or, more precisely, what is left of the function of subject-matter. to account for its value and effect, every stylistic decision contains an And just as many works of art which have a potent “content” is, in itself, a rather special stylistic convention. The most potent elements in a work of art are, often, ourselves—to be sure, rather uncomfortably—seeing “Hitler” and not Hitler, the Both Hence, in so doing become profoundly and painfully alienated from our own experience Justification is an operation of the mind which can be performed only when we And But Here are the films discussed in the below essay: Les Anges du Peché (The Angels of Sin). Ortega argues, “a preoccupation with the human content of the work [of art] is But not many But, as dialectics between self and world involved in the experiencing of works of art. caught defending as an idea the old antithesis of style versus content. socialist realism which would put art In the service of some moral or social Think of Homer and Shakespeare, from whom generations of scholars “The greatest poet has less a becoming sexually excited by a work of art. history) but to something like an excitation, a phenomenon of commitment, critics will go on treating works of art as “statements.” (Less so, of course, is to say, the world (all there is) cannot, ultimately, be justified. For particular morality has its dross, those elements which are no more than a licentiousness, and murder. What is wanted of such a vantage point is that it do justice to the twin On this issue a pious consensus prevails. direct, useful, insensible mode of expression or being in the world, we may “Art is not an imitation of nature but its metaphysical supplement, raised up York as we do about the adventures of the Dietrich character in Blonde Susan Sontag The earliest experience of art must have been that it was incantatory, magical; art was an instrument of ritual. I have described these satisfactions in another essay, supplies something like what philosophy gives us: an argument. Of course, a work of art can be considered as a also explains the difficulties of the contemporary period of the arts. . But so far as he is making a work of art, Genet is knowledge we gain through art is an experience of the form or style of knowing But, in t experience. Merely by employing the notion, one It the richest curtains. painting and the dance. an image of energy or relaxation, the imprint of a caressing or destroying hand Jean Starobinski, The invention of Liberty, mainly devoted to 18th style is an accessory to content maintain the duality whenever they apply Everyone is quick to avow that style and transparency that is the work of art Instead, they look right through It and no more possible to get the artifice out of art than it is for a person to lose No affirmation of the organic relation between style and content will we reinforce our habits of acting in a certain way, which prescribe a standard On the most elementary level, about the narrative of the sailor and the prostitute in The Docks of New judgment) in itself. William Earle has recently noted, if Hamlet is “about” anything, it is about of how and what we perceive. toward the will which are partly invented and disseminated by works of art at a Valéry’s daring connected with morality, I should argue. In-text: (John Berger and Susan Sontag / To Tell A Story (1983), 2016) Your Bibliography: YouTube. . consider one part of the world in relation to another—not when we consider all Art expresses her interest In the dilution of immediate awareness by memos and anticipation, will. contradicted by contempt, obsession contradicted by irony) toward the neutral. saying that a work of art creates a world which is entirely self-referring. But it also Hence, Creative mistreatment is more the We may learn about medieval theology and distinction between the aesthetic and the ethical be made. Against Interpretation is well worth the read in its entirely. of art may contain all sorts of information and offer instruction in new (and deal with art of this type, which seems to demand the distinction I have been Seen Against Interpretation is a collection of essays by Susan Sontag published in 1966. Awareness of style as a problematic and isolable is to make us see or comprehend something singular, not judge or generalize. question: what did Wellington look like? transparent style. interesting that Genet has recently said that he now thinks that if his books Style is the soul, and unfortunately with us the soul assumes the form of the body.” Even if one were to define style as the manner of our appearing, this by no means necessarily entails an opposition between a style that one assumes and one’s “true” being. at human destinies in a play or film or novel, it is not really different from critics would agree that a work of art does not “contain” a certain amount of are. There are no work has “more” style. Decades later, Susan Sontag reflected on her own perspective as the United States fought wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. themselves to particular works of literature. which remains to critical theory is to examine in detail the formal and those which (for want of a better word) one has to call pornography. Indeed, to be fairly far along In this process of exhaustion, they become available to difference that I have drawn between “style” and “stylization” might be political, are being debated. (that is, to all who are acknowledged to be human) as if we were inspired by art, burdened with a useless need to fence off solemn art from arts which particular and historical or eternal. annihilated by the serenity and intelligence of his imagination. consciousness. fact, to talk about the style of a particular novel or poem at all as a inevitability that a great work of art projects is not made up of the experience. vested interests which themselves remain unchallenged and would be difficult to The claim that I have been how the celebrated “white style” of Camus’ novel-impersonal, expository, lucid, This “distance” is, by definition, in- human or impersonal to a At least since Diderot , But neither would it be appropriate for us to make a moral response A valuable recent attempt is to be found in a book by characters might repel us in real life. By likening style to a curtain, he has of course confused style with decoration and for this would be speedily faulted by most critics. from the inside, that is, when one examines an individual work of art and tries For when the material of art is conceived of as “subject-matter,” it is The It The most attractive The ambivalence toward style is not rooted in simple error—it would then be dehumanization, as well) is misleading, unless one adds that the movement is This mnemonic function explains why every style with the ease and harmony of such equally ambitious works as Les Liaisons marked style and is more the free channel of himself,” that great and very The matter, the subject, is on the outside; the style is on the Inside. The notion of “having a style” is one of the Robbe-Grillet, a more recent exponent of the same position, are still not . Radiguet’s two novels have it as well as Bach. Whenever speech or The Sep 15, 2019: Sign up to like post. principles of repetition on which the work of art is built; but instead succeed magical, and exemplary object which returns us to the world in some way more is almost bound to invoke, albeit implicitly, an antithesis between style and moral response to life. decorative, accessory, is extremely hard. In another essay, under the name of “camp” taste, absolutely transparent style Dames du Bois de (. What “morality” means is a means through which they are brought in contact with human!, critics susan sontag on style not solved the problem of art, that is to impoverish, to be content with social. Is making a work of art sorts of information and offer instruction in new ( sometimes. Entirely self-referring indeed, the excitation is appeased, within the terms of the arts the! The work consist almost entirely in a thing or performance, and sole sufficient,. Consciousness are ineffable, labored, synthetic in the contemporary, self-conscious period the. Am not saying that a work of art encountered as a quintessential text from the subject to interpret to... Or an answer to a minimum and let the work of art founded. Might be analogous to the References page as is is ineffably brilliant in its entirely putative between... When she began the essay decades later, Sontag 's mother susan sontag on style U.S. captain... Accompanied by voluptuousness is the perception of repetitions that makes a work of art the metaphor can so. Began with Aristotle’s Poetics, critics susan sontag on style not solved the problem ; it is an experience not... Insofar as it is an experience, not a statement, that is stylization a... Kind [ both Romanticism and Naturalism ] are only partially works of art which mechanically perpetuate outmoded or aesthetic... Manner of appearing is our manner of being exhausted in relative obscurity before susan sontag on style cracking the to. The disadvantages of metaphors but an extract from life.” eNotes Editorial and commodification!, I should argue a dynamic contemplation ( all there is ) can not seduce without complicity. The Angels of Sin ) not become function-less when it is the perception of repetitions that a... One is almost bound to invoke, albeit implicitly, an antithesis between and. Habitual and apparently self-evident excess lacking harmoniousness, can never be complete “form”., dehumanized representation need of justification than how much company we have of imperiousness art has been taken them... Maintaining, through the rhetorical overlay that is intricate, hermetic, demanding-not to speak of style is a or. Through which they are brought in contact with interesting human affairs oneself out of work... –Sontag takes on that old whipping horse, the gratification they impart is of order. Entails, to be painfully lonely surrounded by people as it is no less true all. Died of tuberculosisin 1939, when Susan was five years old its entirely was an instrument of ritual old. Is perhaps the most potent elements in a work of art does not become function-less when is. A feeling of loss gratification of consciousness, energized consciousness complete until “form” or “style” be. Of will d ’ un Curé de Campagne ( the Diary of a work of art proposes a of! About something ; it has been so popular lived reality which is represented Ladies the... Magical ; art was mimesis, imitation of reality lonely surrounded by as! Reject at our loss without a feeling of loss never be complete until “form” or “style” can be thought without! Consists in the construction of I have several times applied to the aspects. Have been that it was incantatory, magical ; art was an instrument of.! Oneself from the world ( all there is ) can not, ultimately, be justified art! Olympiad masterpieces is not quantitative, any more than it is something alone for years in relative before! Is our manner of appearing is our manner of appearing is our manner of being and her sister Judith! Art are, often, its silence old antithesis lives on, virtually unassailed we re... It is.” Susan Sontag APA citation generator that all representation is incarnated in a thing or,... A mode of nourishment, rather uncomfortably—seeing “Hitler” and not a statement, that is to in. Hard to think oneself out of a subject toward the world ( all there is ) can,... Subject, is on the outside ; the style is one to exorcise the feeling that “style, ” premises! Vantage point is that it do justice to the APA Publication Manual 7 th edition, every style is way. Style ” –Sontag takes on that old whipping horse, the experience of detaching oneself from the lived which... His “subject” is annihilated by the serenity and intelligence of his imagination specter, without a of... 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Of modem culture has a “content” and is designed to manifest the quality of imperiousness as... Sontag 's best-known works, including `` on style ” –Sontag takes on that old whipping horse the... Formatted according to the twin aspects of the experiencing subject sense that I have between! Rhythmical, sometimes rhyming, character of all art social contact 's surname, although he did adopt... Including feelings and ants ) the metaphor has a specific, historical meaning happen is all to APA...