Hinweis: weitergeleitete Nachricht angehängt.






___________________________________________________________
Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - Jetzt mit 250MB Speicher kostenlos - Hier anmelden:
http://mail.yahoo.de

Susan Sontag

December 31, 2004

Dear Dilek,

She was my heroine because she was passionate about life and art
and spent a lifetime trying to figure them out. Susan Sontag
was brilliant from the get go, often controversial and always
uncompromising in her intent to understand. On Tuesday Susan
died in New York from complications of acute myelogenous
leukemia. She was 71.

I first read her essay "Notes on 'Camp'" in 1968. It's like a
shotgun in the belly of what is and isn't Camp. To my mind she
made it possible for authors like Tom Wolfe to write "The
Painted Word." Styles like Art Nouveau are Camp. Primitivism
is Camp and now Modernism is too. Santa Claus painted by Haddon
Sundblom is Camp. Santa himself is Camp. My paintings have
always been Camp--maybe yours are too. Camp requires a shot of
innocence and often a return to an earlier style. Camp has its
own brand of sincerity. "The whole point of Camp," she said,
"is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful, anti-serious.
One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the
serious." Asking you to send me your New Year's resolutions is
Camp. This letter is Camp. I address you by your first name
even though we may never meet. How Campy. That you and I are
in the same boat is High Camp.

Susan looked for a sensualist approach to art. She championed
aesthetic form over content. Susan did a good job of blurring
the lines between high and low culture. She was the first, to
my knowledge, to be really suspicious of the idea of "taste."
Susan was the first of the plain writers to make me think and
take a closer look at what I was doing.

Susan saw a greater world. "Sooner or later you have to start
thinking of others," she said. She knew about the process that
was needed to develop keenness. She knew the value of doing
rather than talking. At the same time she had lots to say to
artists. "Interpretation in art is the revenge of the
intellect," she said. Through essays, novels, plays and
interviews, Susan had something to say about photography, AIDS,
foreign policy, history, war, pain, torture, illness, advocacy,
and the empowerment of women. She was a fearless champion of
human rights. "My primary obligation is human solidarity."
Susan's plan will be mine for the New Year.

Best regards,

Robert

PS: "Boredom is the reverse side of fascination. Both depend on
being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to
another." (Susan Sontag 1933-2004)

Esoterica: New York writer Margalit Fox has assembled a list of
adjectives that have been used to describe Susan. They include
original, trendy, rhapsodic, naive, sophisticated, abrasive,
aloof, populist, puritanical, ascetic, voluptuary, right-wing,
left-wing, profound, superficial, ardent, ambivalent, lofty,
erudite, lucid, visceral, maddening, lyrical, abstract, acerbic,
chilly, gimmicky, facile, illogical, aloof, glib, cantankerous,
clever--and dozens more. Talking of Susan, the word "dull" is
never mentioned.

Current clickback: If you would like to see selected,
illustrated responses to the last letter "Making plans," mostly
about resolutions and plans, please go to:
http://www.painterskeys.com/clickbacks/making-plans.asp

If you would like to comment on this letter or add your own
opinions, information or observations, please do so. Thanks for
writing rgenn@...

If you think a friend or fellow artist may find value in this
material please feel free to forward it. This does not mean
that they will automatically be subscribed to the Twice-Weekly
Letter. They have to do it voluntarily and can find out about
it by going to http://www.painterskeys.com

The Twice-Weekly Letters are in Russian at
http://painterskeys.narod.ru/ and in French at
http://www.painterskeys.com/fr/

In compliance with the welcome legislation on spamming, our
mailing address is: Painter's Keys, 12711 Beckett Rd., Surrey,
B.C., Canada, V4A 2W9.

You are currently subscribed as: passionsdrop@...
- Subscribe free; http://painterskeys.com/subscribe/
- Unsubscribe free; http://www.painterskeys.com/#subs
- Change my address free; http://www.painterskeys.com/#ec

(c) Copyright 2004 Robert Genn. If you wish to copy this
material to other publications or mail lists, please ask for
permission by writing rgenn@... For those who now
celebrate the beginning of a New Year, we wish you all the best
for 2005.