Brooklyn Rail - Art Review - December 18, 2013
“In place of a hermeneutics, we need an erotics of art.” Susan Sontag offered this challenge to a critic in her 1964 essay, “Against Interpretation.” She argued that the task of a critic was to elucidate for the reader how a work of art “is what it is,” rather than to show “what it means.” Perhaps Sontag had the work of artist Paul Thek in mind when she first wrote the words; perhaps not. In any case, she was surely thinking of him when she compiled her essays into the published 1966 collection, also titled Against Interpretation. She dedicated the book to Thek.