“Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.”

— Susan Sontag

Source: Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966), p. 7

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Susan Sontag 168

American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist 1933–2004

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“To be angry, is to revenge the fault of others upon ourselves.”

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“Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, comformable.”

Susan Sontag book Against Interpretation

"Against Interpretation" (1964), p. 8
Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966)

“Art does not imitate, but interpret.”

Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872) Italian patriot, politician and philosopher

The Life and Writings of Joseph Mazzini (1864), p. vii
Context: Art does not imitate, but interpret. It searches out the idea lying dormant in the symbol, in order to present the symbol to men in such form as to enable them to penetrate through it to the idea. Were it otherwise, what would be the use or value of art?

“Just as science is the intellect of the world, art is its soul.”

Maxim Gorky (1868–1936) Russian and Soviet writer

Untimely Thoughts (1917-18) (original: Наиболее успешно и могуче будит в нашей душе ее добрые начала сила искусства. Как наука является разумом мира, так искусство — сердце его.)
Context: The good qualities in our soul are most successfully and forcefully awakened by the power of art. Just as science is the intellect of the world, art is its soul.

“Is the intellect to be regarded as autonomous and self-sufficient, as pursuing ends of its own, and as judging by standards of its own? or is it to be regarded as the servant of alien interests which impose their ends and standards upon it? The modern tendency has been towards the latter or practical interpretation of the knowing faculties.”

Ralph Barton Perry (1876–1957) American philosopher

The Integrity of the Intellect (July 1920)

“Art is Nature made by Man
To Man the interpreter of God.”

Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton (1831–1891) English statesman and poet

The Artist, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“What the overemphasis on the idea of content entails is the perennial, never consummated project of interpretation. And, conversely, it is the habit of approaching works of art in order to interpret them that sustains the fancy that there really is such a thing as the content of a work of art.”

Susan Sontag book Against Interpretation

"Against Interpretation" (1964), p. 5
Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966)

“I think that it will be a great success, that all this painting [of Edouard Manet, shortly after his death], so fresh, so vital, will electrify the 'Palais des Beaux Arts' [in Paris], which is accustomed to dead art. It will be the revenge for so many rebuffs, but a revenge that the poor boy only in his grave.”

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) painter from France

in a letter to her sister Edma Morisot, c. Jan 1884; as cited in: Impressionist quartet, ed. Jeffrey Meyers; publishers, Harcourt, 2005, p. 124
1881 - 1895

“According to the traditional interpretation Plato’s attitude against rhetoric is a rejection of the doxa, or opinion, and of the impact of images, upon which the art of rhetoric relies; at the same time his attitude is considered as a defense of the theoretical, rational speech, that is, of episteme.”

Ernesto Grassi (1902–1991) Italian philosopher

The fundamental argument of Plato’s critique of rhetoric usually is exemplified by the thesis, maintained, among other things, in the Gorgias, that only he who "knows" [epistatai] can speak correctly; for what would be the use of the "beautiful," of the rhetorical speech, if it merely sprang from opinions [doxa], hence from not knowing? … Plato’s … rejection of rhetoric, when understood in this manner, assumes that Plato rejects every emotive element in the realm of knowledge. But in several of his dialogues Plato connects the philosophical process, for example, with eros, which would lead to the conclusion that he attributes a decisive role to the emotive, seen even in philosophy as the absolute science.
Source: Rhetoric as Philosophy (1980), p. 28

“The best art, and the only art which will ever lead to great results, must have for its basis the interpretation of beauty in nature.”

Ernest Flagg (1857–1947) American architect

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922), Introduction

“Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.”

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