"Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art." Susan Sontag
Marsha I think you would find Sontags' work interesting, I remember her writing a piece on beauty. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of MarshaV Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 5:37 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [MD] Mountain View Greetings, A while back I was trying to explain that I thought interpreting the Social & Intellectual Levels was so confusing because we are immersed in them. Here is a far better description of what I was trying to explain, but pertaining to art. "On the other hand, all attempts to discover the essential properties of art have been carried out through a search for common denominators within art itself. However,when looking for the especially large patterns of a particular territory it is sometimes necessary to climb to heights much greater than the mountaintops in that territory. Thus, for instance, if we seek to find the common denominator of Libya, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey, the intuitive reply is, "Trouble." But if this region is viewed from a height of several dozen kilometers, it is easily seen that all these nations have a common coastline. Similarly, it is possible that the answer to the questions, "What is the common denominator of works of art?" is not so evident at the level of the works themselves; instead, we can discover it more easily if we look for it from a height that allows us to see art as a special case of a broader pattern that includes the other areas of culture. Too many people are still trapped by the idea of the importance of the definition of art, ..." (Avital, 'ART versus NONART', p. 258) The last sentence seems very relevant. But this is just a reflection of my own confusion. m moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
