The Art of Tetman Callis

“Susan Sontag wrote in her essay ‘Against Interpretation’ that ‘in place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.’ Meaning: the interpretation of art is a tiresome pseudoscience, and the magnetism of art is what has always saved it from becoming dull, weighted down. It’s something we see and feel first and foremost, before we attempt to understand it. It’s a pretty rich line of thinking for an art critic, no? Still, I’ll drink to it. As a people, we’ve toiled for too long at the heavy project of understanding individual works. Entire books are devoted to it. Entire academic disciplines. Entire careers. The important thing, it seems, is to develop tools with which to dissect art so that no piece of art need remain a mystery to its viewer. But . . . why? So few experiences have the ability to enrapture that art has, and I mean all kinds of art. The mystique of it is the point. To be arrested by a sentence, a key change, a flash of white sun poking through deep brown twigs in a landscape—that’s why we keep making all this crap. It can be so insular to make art, and so lonely. Our projects consume us.” – Rax King, “Three Small Words,” in Tacky (emphases in original)