On Style (re-present)
A manifesto created by translating Susan Sontag’s <on style> 1965 into the design manifesto in Blauvelt et al’s <Conditional Design Manifesto> 2013.
Susan Sontag in her <on style> shows her criticism and views on style in artwork. She argues that every work of art has a style. Artworks belonging to different, more or less complex stylistic traditions and conventions also have a style. Susan Sontag wants people not to divide style and content by tradition, and that every aesthetic influences the interpretation of a work of art or literature.
Problem
Whether style and content are separable and whether style is ‘decorative’ or ‘accessory’. Some critics and artists have misunderstood the relationship between style and content, often seeing them as separate entities.
Contradictions
The notion of styleless, transparent art is one of modern culture’s most persistent illusions.
Whitman’s analogy confuses style with ‘decoration’. But in fact style is not as cumbersome as ‘decoration’, nor is it quantity and addition.
For a work of art to be authentic, it must be free of any form of artifice, and style is seen as artificial.
The ‘stylisation’ of a work of art is different from the style and reflects an ambivalent attitude towards the subject.
Stylised art, which is clearly an art of excess and lack of harmony, can never be the greatest art.
Critics who see the work of art as a statement are wary of ‘style’ and continue to focus on this ‘reality’ captured by the work of art rather than the extent to which the work of art engages the mind in certain transformations.
Way
Content, i.e., subject matter, is on the outside; style is on the inside.
Style is the soul.
The separation between style and ‘being’ is extremely rare, and the way style appears is the way we are.
Style is ‘loud’, ‘heavy’, ‘full’, ‘tasteless’, or the use of the argument’s image that it is ‘inconsistent’ seems harmless.
Presence and change
In a general sense, the concept of style has a specific historical meaning. Not only does style belong to a certain time and place, but our perception of the style of a given work of art always involves an awareness of the historicity of that work and its place in the chronological order.
The visibility of style is itself a product of historical consciousness.
Stylisation occurs when the style of a work of art is artificial.
‘Stylisation’ occurs in a work of art when the artist does make a distinction, which is by no means unavoidable, between material and manner, between subject and form.
It is only when a new dominant style replaces the existing one that the old idea is understood in retrospect.
Volition
All artists have a style.
The viewer must not ignore the style when appreciating a work of art in favour of understanding what the author is trying to say.
Art is not a moral phenomenon, but an aesthetic one.
Art can produce moral pleasure.
In art, ‘content’ is like a pretext, a goal, a temptation, which involves consciousness in an essentially formal process of transformation.
Maurer et al. Conditional Design Manifesto. [online]Available at: <https://conditionaldesign.org/manifesto/>[Accessed 13 Nov 2024].
Rose Bedell, Mary. “5 Key Takeaways from Susan Sontag’s Famous Essay On Style” TheCollector.com, October 15, 2023, https://www.thecollector.com/susan-sontag-on-style-takeaways/.
Susan Sontag(1965)2009. ‘On Style’, Against Interpretation and Other Essays. [online]Available at: <http://www.coldbacon.com/writing/sontag-onstyle.html>[Accessed 13 Nov 2024].
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