Re: Dark Decade...
Sarah Dunbar Poitevent (sdp5e@uva.pcmail.virginia.edu)
Tue, 25 Mar 97 15:11:03 EST
The last lines of the book summarize, I think, what the author is trying to
get across. "the function of an image is to be, not to mean." There is an
article written by an art historian, Susan Sontag, who says that the problem
with interpretation in modern times is that we tend to distort the image as
we try to interpret it to mean something. We change the context as we try to
relate the art to our own experiences and ideas. It becomes too
individualized. Art is intimidating, and in the act of trying to interpret
the work, we somehow tame it, put it more into our own perspectives and
conditioned ideas, so that it becomes less intimidating. but at the same time
different from its original intentions. She says that this approach is not
the correct way of looking at art. We should appreciate the face value of
the work, its lines and colors and emotions that it gives off, before trying
to adapt it to our perceptions. Not all art has to have a point. It can
just "be."