Stella Maybethat's

the quality of simplicity. When Mantle

given works of art - becomes

problematic,

in need of

defence. And it is the defence of art which gives birth to the

fora minute because it's so simple. He knocks it right out

odd vision by which something

of the park, and that usually does it [ ... ]

'form' is separated

TomHess, review of Morris

LOlli s . ARTnews (1959).

Cleillent Greenberg,

Abstract

'After

Yves Klein's

exhibition

Paris.

1958. consisted

move which

Clert

have discarded

Gallery,

a Poet and in Orpheus wanted the elaborate readings

expression,

r-eoe.
Elaine de Kooni ng, "pure Pai nts a Picture'

the theory of art as representation

which have been given these films, in terms ofFreudian

of an

symbolism and social critique. But the meritofthese

works certainly lies elsewhere than in their 'meanings'.

outer reality in favour ofthe theory of art as subjective

of an empty. white-walled

, ARTnews,

56;

persists.

be interpreted. Perhaps

Tennessee Williams thinks Streetcar is about what Kazan

thinks it to be about. It may be that Cocteau in The Blood of

and form accessory.

Even in modern times, when most artists and critics

at the Iris

It doesn't matter whether artists intend, or don't

intend, fortheirworksto

we have learned to

and tothewell-intentioned

makes content essential

7: 8 (1962).

trtterndtfon61,

April

call 'content',

Expr-es s icnt sn", An

we have learned to cal!

offfrom something

the main feature of the mimetic theory

Indeed, it is precisely to the extent that Williams' plays

and Cocteau's films do suggest these portentous

Whether we conceive of the work of art on the

model ofa picture (art as a picture of reality) or on the

meanings that they are defective, false, contrived,

Bruce G1 aser , . New Hi hill sm or New Art 1 I nte rvt ew w1th

model of a statement

lacking in conviction.

scene.

content still comes first. The content may have changed. It

4 (Sumner 1957) 57; 96-87.

Judd ~nd Flavin'.

NewYork. February
to Stella

Gre90ry Battcock
Additional

broadcast

on WBAIFM,

may now be less figurative,less

1964, Rev t s ed and publ t shed as 'Questions

and Judd',

19661; reprinted

originally

still assumed

ARTnews. ec . Lucy R. L1ppard (September

in MInimal Art:

A Critic")

tNewYork: E.P, Dutton & Co,

remarks transcribed

from

eo .

Anthology,

(art as the statement

1968) 148-64.

of the artist),

accommodate

is its content. Or, as it's

usually put today, that a work of art by definition says

interpretations.

should be resisted. What matters in Marienbadisthe

('What X is saying is ... " 'What X is trying to

pure, untranslatable,

(or thought one knew) what it did. From nowtotheend

Against Interpretation [1964]

The earliest experience of art must have been that it was
incantatory, magical; art was an instrument

philosophers, proposed that art was mimesis, imitation of

reality.
It is at this point that the peculiar question of the value

We can only quarrel with one or another means of defence.

('Never trust the teller, trustthetale',

Indeed, we have an obligation to overthrow any meansof

Taken as a brute object, as an immediate sensory

defending

equivalent for the mysterious

and justifying art which becomes particularly

to contemporary

Plato, who proposed the theory, seems to have done so

needs

This is the case, today, with the very idea ofcontent

who reach fora Freudian interpretation

itself. Whatever it may have been in the past, the idea of

only expressing their lack of responseto

content is today mainly a hindrance,

a nuisance, a subtle

the screen.

in many arts may

indicates a dissatisfaction

because the idea is now perpetuated

considered ordinary material things as themselves

mimetic objects, imitations of transcendent
structures, even the best paintingofa

certain way of encountering

forms or

particularly useful (the painting ofa bed is no good to sleep

view that all art is an elaborate trompe'I'oeil,

Plato's

and therefore

a lie. But he does dispute Plato's idea that art is useless.

Lie

orno, art has a certain value according to Aristotle because

and purges

In Plato and Aristotle, the mimetic theory of art goes

close their eyes to decorative and abstract art. The fallacy

can be modified or

of and reflection

upon art have remained within the confines staked out by

through this theory that art as such -above

It is

and beyond

attempt to have, in the ordinary sense, no content; since

of the

there is no content, there can be no interpretation.

content so blatant, so 'what it is', it, too, ends by being

is

uninterpretable.
A great deal of modern poetry as well, starting from the
great experiments

the revenge of the intellect upon art,

Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the
to deplete the world It is to

turn the world into this world, ('This world'l As if there

wereanyother.)
The world, our world, is depleted, impoverished
of it, until we again

Pop art

works by the opposite means to the same result; using a

of art today

expense of energy and sensual capability, interpretation

seem's particularly a

feature of modern painting. Abstract painting is the

In a culture whose already

enough. Away with all duplicates

art may become parody. Or it may become

become non-art.

and of heavy industry which befoul the urban

the effusion ofinterpretations

as

To avoid

abstract. Or it may become ('merely') decorative. Or it may

Today is such a time, when the projectofinterpretation

poisons our sensibilities.

art may be understood

The flight from interpretation

in order to set up a shadow world of'meanings'.

delimited by the mimetictheory.

the Greek theory of art as mimesis or representation,

interpretation,

works of art in order to interpret them that

world. To interpret is to impoverish,

scrapped without ever moving outside the problems

The fact is, all Western consciousness

project of

And, conversely, it is the habit of

content of a work of art [ ... J

automobile

into a

does not, of course, always prevail. In

motivated by a flight from interpretation.

classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the

that art is always

figurative, But advocates of the mimetic theory need not

that art is necessarily a 'realism'

Interpretation

fact, a great deal oftoday's

sustains the fancy that there really is such a thing as the

atmosphere,

dangerous emotions.
hand in hand with the assumption

approaching

never consummated

ofitems of content, violates art.

mental scheme of categories.

on the idea of content

is largely reactionary, stifling. Likethefumes

it is a form oftherapy. Art is useful, after all,Aristotle

counters, medicinally useful in that itarouses

entails is the perennial,

interpretation.

on), nor, in the strict sense, true. And Aristotle's

arguments in defense of art do not really challenge

in the guise ofa

works of art thoroughly

seriously. What the overemphasis

For Plato, art is neither

else.

It makes art into an article for use, for arrangement

ingrained among most people who take any of the arts

bed would be only

ofthis type

(conscious or unconscious)

based on the highly dubious theory that

a work of art is composed

Iwant to suggest that this is

what is there on

with the work, a wish to replace it by something

Interpretation,

is primarily its content, the idea still exerts an

hegemony.

ofthe tank are

It is always the case that interpretation

or notso subtle philistinism.

extraordinary

in order to rule that the value of art is dubious. Since he

abrupt armoured

happenings going on inside the hotel, that sequence with

seem to be leading us away from the idea that a work of art

challenges art to justify itself.

said tawrence.)

the tank isthe most striking moment in the film. Those

Though the actual developments

of art arose. For the mimetic theory, by its very term,

rumbling down the empty night street in The Silence as a

phallic symbol. But Hhe did, it was a foolish thought.

and practice.

Pasiega, etc.). The earliest theory of art, that of the Greek

an 'imitation of an imitation',

of

we are stuck with the task ofdefendingart.

obtuse or onerous or insensitive

of ritual (the

paintings in the caves at Lascaux, Altamira, Niaux, La

immediacy of some of its

Again, Ingmar Bergman may have meant the tank

did not ask of a work of art what it said because one knew

consciousness,

sensuous

to interpret Marienbad

problems of cinematic form.

theory when art knew no need to justify itself, when one

Susan SONTAG

But the temptation

images, and its rigorous if narrow solutions to certain

None of us can ever retrieve that innocence before all

Pacifica Radtc Arch I VI!No. 663394.

designed Last Yearat Marienbadto

a multiplicity of equally plausible

something.

say is ... " 'What X said is ... ',etc., etc.]

the WBAI recording,

From interviews, it appears that Resnais and RobbeGrilletconsciously

lucidly realistic. But it is

that a workofart

201

experience more immediately what we have [ ... }

hits the ball out of'the park, everybody is sort of stunned

of French poetry (including the

movement that is misleadingly called Symbolism) to put

silence into poems and to reinstate the magic of the word,
has escaped from the rough gripofinterpretation.

The

most recent revolution in contemporary taste in poetrythe revolution that has deposed Eliot and elevated Pound
_ represents a turning away from content in poetry in the
old sense, an impatience with what made modern poetry

DOCUMENTS

202

prey to the zeal of interpreters

of this type.) An exampleofformal

( .. ]

It is possible to elude the interpreters

simultaneously

in another way,

is so rapid, whose address is so

to genre and author is Walter Benjamin's

the

prlmari

now? It does happen in films, I believe. This is why cinema

would supply a really accurate, sharp, loving description

division

isthe mostalive, the most exdting, the most important

the appearance

of

of

of a work of art. This seems even harder to

Susan

11

Sontag'.

dothan formal analysis. Some of Manny Farber's fllm

atr-cux

criticism, Dorothy Van Ghent's essay 'The Dickens World:

A View from Todgers', Randall Jarrell's essay on Walt

the films of Bergman -though

Whitman are among the rare examples of what I mean.

crammed with lame

messages about the modern spirit, thereby inviting

These are essays which reveal the sensuous

interpretations

without mucking about in it.

- still triumph over the pretentious

intentions of their director. In Winter Light and The

Silence, the beauty and visual sophistication

Transparence

ofthe images

subvert before our eyes the callow pseudo-intellectuality

of

art-and

is the highest, most liberating value in

in criticism -today. Transparence

experiencing

surface of art

the luminousness

film cdtlcism
here.

Interpretation',

WAGSTAFF,Jr

SamueLJ.

Paintings to Think About

[1964]

instance ofthis sort of discrepancy is the work ofD. W.

example, the fllms of Bresson and Ozu and Renoir's The

For a numberofcontemporary

Griffith.) In good films, there is always a directness

Rules of the Game.

works tend away from Expressionism

Hollywoodfilms,likethose

revolutionary

and creative move to design works of art so

that they might be experienced

symbolic quality, no less than the best work of the new

not. It reinforces the principle of redundancy

Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player

European directors,like

of, for

Once upon a time (say, for Dante), it must have been a

ofCukor, Walsh, Hawks and

andJufesandJim, Godard's Breathfessand vivre Sa Vie,

. Antonioni's L'Allllentura and Dlmi's The Fiances.

on several levels. Now it is

direction,
guide.

in a more austere

John Cage has been an intellectual

the composer

Whether

American artists, whose

his influence

has been direct, as in the

Warhol, etc., or whether it

case of Johns, Rauschenberg,

was just a parallel affinity, Cage seems to be a spiritual

that is the

principal affliction of modern life.

leader with an aggressive

Once upon a time (a time when high art was scarce), it

following. In alphabetical order,

Marcel

Duchamp,

Barnett Newman

must have been a revolutionary and creative move to

equally

influential

with manyoftheseyounger

interpret works of art. Now it is not. What we decidedly do

Cage's

remarks

interpreters is in part due simply to the newness of cinema

not need now is further to assimilate Art into Thought, or

there',

and 'there is not enough

as an art. It also owes to the happy accident that films for

(worse yet) Art into Culture.

represent

a binding

sculptors

for the visual arts as wel/.

The fact that films have not been overrun by

such a longtime were just movies; in other words, that

they were understood

Interpretation

to be part of mass, as opposed to

takes the sensory experience

of the work

of art for granted, and proceeds from there. This cannot be

high, culture and were left alone by most people with

taken for granted now. Thinkofthe

minds. Then, too, there is always somethingotherthan

works of art available to every one of us, superadded

content in the cinema to grab hold of, for those who want

conflicting tastes and odours and sights ofthe urban

to analyse. Forthecinema,

environment

unlike the novel, possesses

vocabulary offorms - the explicit, complex and

discussable technology of camera movements,
and composition

cutting

loss of sharpness

of the frame that goes into the making of

a film.

of

to the

in our sensory experience.

All the
its sheer

to dull our sensory faculties. And it

is in the light ofthe condition of our senses, our capacities

desirable today? For I am not saying that works of art are

(rather than those of another age), that the task of the critic

ineffable, that they cannot be described or paraphrased.

must beassessed.

They can be. The question is how. What would criticism

look like that would serve the work of art, not usurp its

now is to recover our senses. We

in a work of art, much less to squeeze more content out of

Ifexcessive stress on content provokes the arrogance of

the work than is already there. Our task isto cut back

interpretation,

contentsothatwecan

more extended and more thorough

descriptions of form would silence. What is needed is a

The aim of all commentary

vocabulary - a descriptive, rather than prescriptive,

vocabulary-for
uncommon,

make works of art - and, by analogy, our own experience-

forms.' The best criticism, and it is

is ofthls sort that dissolves considerations

more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism

of

content into those ofform. On film, drama and painting

should be to show how it is what it is, even that it;s what it

is, rather than to show what it means.

respectively,l can think of Erwin Panofsky's essay 'Style

In place of hermeneutics

and Medium in the Motion Pictures', Northrop Frye's

One of the difficulties

essay 'A Conspectus of Dramatic Genres', Pierre

spatial

from notions

Roland Barthes' book On Racine and his two essays on

vocabulary

RobbeGriltet are examples offormal analysis applied to

temporal
course,

are also

of space).

for form are all derived

arts.

The exception

'musicto

is ~ narrative

rt

In front of some of this art, 'one is left

beseen'.

rather than seeing and the only choice is to

believe',

or as Rauschenberg

nothing

has said of one of his ear/yaU

'!fyou don't take it seriously, there is

white paintings,

to take'. Painting and sculpture

often seems

ofthis nature

to be an idea made manifest.

work is planned

frrstand

on the canvas (Ad Reinhardt:

prescribed

paint ratherthan
seems

Almostall cfthls

then filled in rather than

'Only a

form can be image-less ... ') In

decisions

pietu reo There is an attempt

take place outside the

to suggest

the presence

the presence of

of the painter. The artist

to meet you even halfway.

'Black, White, and Gray' atthe

Wadsworth

Atheneum,

o.fsimilarity

and difference

Hartford, tries to show the degree

of twenty or so such painters

and sculptors

- among others, James Byars, Moskowitz,

Lichtenstein,

Rauschenberg,

Smith, Jasper Johns,

Reinhardt,

Anne Truitt, Tony

Ellsworth Kelly, CyTwombly, Agnes

Martin,

Robert Morris, George Brecht, Frank Stella, Gary

Indiana,

Alexander

overlapping

is because

liberman,

Ray Parker, Jean Follett, Jim

aesthetic

in varying degrees.

arts,

of

or grey, so chosen

all the works selected are black, white

in an attempt

to keep the viewer from

the dram~

.. tenpor-at ) form that extends

itself

being distracted
the degree

HIGH MINIMALISM

idea artas opposed to

In this respect one thinks of Cage's

than for the

among the temporal

is the drama; per-haps this

sparse, pared downtoa

Dine and Andy Warhol. These artists seem to fit into this

Th1s is why we have a more ready

of forms for the spatial

Much ofitseems

much of it is conceptual,

Quite arbitrarily,

the work of a single author. (The best essays in Erich

Auerbach's Mimesis, like 'The Scar of Odysseus',

we need a~ erctlcs of art.

is that our idea of form is

(the Greek metaphors

Francastel's essay 'The Destruction of a Plastic Space'.

tradition.

The exhibition

on art now should beto

of many painters and

thinking

seldom

seethe thing at all.

of nothing in it', might

philosophy

other words, aesthetic

Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content

What is needed, first, is more attention to form in art.

recent

minimum;

standardized,

must learn to see more, to hear more, tofeel more.

place?

moderns.

Much of this art seems strongly anti. tradition, even

conceived

What is important

and Ad Reinhardtare

about music, 'there is too much there

the retinal or visceral.

the result is a steady

conditions of modern life- its material plenitude,

crowded ness -conjoin

What kind of criticism, of commentary on the arts, is

sheer multiplication

that bombard our senses. Ours is a culture

based on excess, on overproduction;

Straus,

means

of the thing in itself, of

countless other directors have this liberating anti-

1964. in Agll/!.st

. 1966).

things being what they are. This is the greatness

entirely frees us from the itch to interpret. Many old

wll! be

since ftlms are

lind other eSHYs (New York: farrar,

the story and some ofthe dialogue. (The most remarkable

that

notion of

form. yet they are also a sub-

'Agalnst

all art forms right now. Perhaps the way one tells how alive
a particular art form is, is by the latitude it gives for making

a visual

_ What we don't

any clear

of literature.

interpretation

mistakes in it, and still being good. For example, a few of

on. PerhapS

of a breakthrough

the occasion

Leskov'.

upon a stlge

of tile novel,

formS of narr-avt

Equally valuable would be acts of criticism which

direct that the work can be ... just what it is. Is this possible

and p1ctorhl1y

have yet t s a poetics

essay, 'The StoryTeller: Reflections on the Works of Nicolai

by making works of art whose surface is so unified and

clean, whose momentum

visually

analysis applied

bythe emotionalism

of severity between

of colour. In this way

artists, which varies greatly,