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I'm reading (21st Century Studies) Richard Grusin-The... on Scribd. Check it out: https://www.scribd.com/book/272443751

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Discussion on Barthes and Sontag on Interpretation and oir search for mean in art and literature

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Discussion on Barthes and Sontag on Interpretation and oir search for mean in art and literature

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A comment in the beginning paragraphs of your discussion  intrigued me :”Is this not quite paradox as how could we understand what they want to tell us?” and later you write that you think understanding is more important than interpretation.  I think that both these critics found themselves at the time of their writing of mentioned essays in an ambiguous situation where their discourse against interpretation and hidden meaning became bestsellers as theory to the literary world, hence I agree with your effort to first understand where they come from to arrive at their statements, thus to put them into context.  ( did a lot of reading myself, and still not sure...)
I read them both as urging the reader to connect with art as the thing itself, the form as in the work of art, the written story as words in the book, and not  to rely the art critic to search for more meaning.  Too much emphasis was placed on trying to retrace the author's intentions and original meaning.  The function of the text is to be read and valued, the author is irrelevant.  Can it be so simple as that in the work of art as well, can we find meaningful art by simply looking at it? 
 Both authors view that the seeing/reading of art/book  (in the attention the viewer give  to details of the work, by spending time looking at it), an opportunity arrises which brings meaning, which can be better than the (prescriptive) interpretation of the art critic in the newspaper or the gallery catalogue.  This meaning will be different to all for reasons which we both agree, as it can be rewritten/deferred and will keep changing. In order to find meaning, will it ever bring us to understanding? Is understanding meaning ever possible?  Does understanding equal interpretation, meaning= understanding   interpretation.   
In Afrikaans a word, begripshorison describes  very well the idea of understanding our world from our own perspective (search for meaning?) (Wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein?) as well as a place into which we move when we meet that same “begripshorison” of the artist/author.  As we come to the conclusion that we will never be able to understand everything, we almost know our/universal shortcomings, due to our own experience of our limited perspective(horizon?).  So: I think this is it....that place of understanding, like a meeting place when one feels you ‘’get” a work of art and for that matter the artist. ( you talked about language and  difficulty and getting a joke).  Sontag argues in that way ‘the thing itself’ will be seen . I do appreciate the value placed on the work/text, (writing process described as crafting a narrative”).... to be experienced.  It opens/free wide multiple meanings to art as well as opportunity to be touched by, or have an encounter with  art itself..here the senses come to play and we have interaction between the author/artist, the viewer/reader and the work/text. 

Now going back to your statement, is this understanding or interpreting?  Is the author  not sending ‘warning signals’ to viewers/readers that we should be wary of trusting one truth and rather trust and challenge  our intuition and own idea of what we think we can understand?  I agree when you say : “ I would rather say: please, give us multiplicity of interpretations and intentions. But leave the ‘inexinexpressible’ (L.Wittgenstein, in: Âhlberg, 1991:26) , the free play of imagination, the space of unrestricted engagement to the beholder, the viewer, the reader. And the artist-self as the ‘creator’, the author would be the reader in the first place.  

Sontag suggest interpretation should be descriptive in the sense that we rely on what we see, more than content.  The fact that people prefer to read the brochures, or the wall note next to the artwork, could  it have everything to do with understanding or interpretation.  When we keep in mind how little time people spend in front of art works.  I would argue that in a contemporary gallery  the curator or even artist could be more readily available and will the experience of interpretation be more interactive and less prescriptive.  

I do think it is important to spend time with the ideas on the author as being dead, as I feel Barthes and Sontag agree on the importance of the work and less the biographical or content. The moment we read the text, the author dies, as we are free to interpret this text in potentially many ways, as readers and the moment in time the reading happens also differ.  So this “death” is that of losing control.  It seams meaning comes from the reader himself, his/her personal experiences....and this means we could have potentially infinite numbers of meaning.   In my research I came upon work done by TS Eliot, which seem close to the ideas of Barthes when it comes around the  person/self/artist/writer/poet.  In 1919  he publishes his manifesto as a poet and critic, “Tradition and the Individual Talent “. The essay appeared in the September and December, 1919, issues of The Egoist, the London-based magazine, and was proposed as a challenge to the conventions of early twentieth-century literary criticism.
The role of the myth of a universal human nature and self is addressed by Barthes in his title . Elliot writes, “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality........But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.”  , Elliot also writes of the poet having a medium (being catalytic agent of the writing/poem)), and not a “personality”  if one keep in mind that a catalyst isn’t affected by the reaction, no trace of it appears in the new compound—but without it, the reaction does not take place. This explains, I think where Barthes’s Death of the Author was inspired(appropriated) from.   Then another important idea from Barthes is the intertextuality, which takes nothing away from creativity, but acknowledges the knowledge that came before us, when states, the text is a “tissue of quotations . . . a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash” .  I think that space lies in the text....in the work of art.  According to Barthes the writer is not the autonomous creator.  In 1978, Roland Barthes published an essay named ‘The Death of the Author’. The ideas of Barthes’ text have sparked off a wide array of discussion. The notion of the death of the author has influenced the art world just as much as literary theory. ‘The Death of the Author’ is less bleak than it sounds. The notion suggests that the author does not control the meaning of their text. Instead, at the expense of the death of the author, we are experiencing the birth of the reader. What Barthes is trying to show us is that texts can exist in countless different times, places and contexts that the author may not have foreseen. In the text’s travels through history, cultures and time, the author’s original meanings are likely to be experienced differently. Put very simply, the death of the author explains that each reader experiences texts contextually and subjectively; therefore the author does not control the reader’s experience of the text.


Ps  ( I understand very little German, just loved the words I used.....I do have genetic German roots, my maiden name being Kühn and had childhood German friends due to the neighbourhood I stayed in. 
I think it  is necessary to have conversations about how we think about art and how we behave around art.  As a last comment I think I should challenge myself much more in terms of who I think I am truly. 

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Thinking of a repetitive practice during my studies

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Thinking of a repetitive practice during my studies

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Meditation Monday, 17 August 2020 with Catherine Bull
“My artworks have neither object nor space nor line nor anything - no forms.  They are light, lightness, about merging, about formlessness, breaking down form.  You wouldn’t think of form by the ocean.  You can go in if you don’t encounter anything.  A world without objects, without interruption, making a work without interruption or obstacle.  It is to accept the necessity of this simple, direct going into a field of vision as you could cross and empty beach to look at the ocean.”   Agnes Martin

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Using meditational drawings as stenciled forms onto drawings.  I worked with the colour of grass and the desert, soft pastels and some acrylic inks.  I live in the desert of Dubai, near the ocean; due to Covid 19 lockdown I have been on a farm in the Swartland area, this is also our home after our time as expats in Dubai expires.  So much was learned about place, home, groundedness, uncertainty, repetition search for meaning. The green of my surroundings is inspirational, full of life and memories of my childhood in Cape Town, shoots of growth and still rooted in this soil of Africa, but like a falcon swerving in the desert landscape and Arabic culture....I will come back to the farm, my roots are here.

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Monday evening meditations