James Hoff & Cary Loren: Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation (signed and numbered silk-screen)

A silk screen edition by James Hoff and Cary Loren in a signed and numbered edition of 50 copies.

The image was proposed when the traveling paperback edition of “Against Interpretation” fell apart in Oslo Norway at gallery 0047 in the first overseas exhibition of “Hungry for Death” (the Destroy All Monsters archive show). After the paperback cover was hung on the wall in Oslo, James Hoff added a “Hitler Mustache” – (not realizing the connection between her famous essay “Against Fascism” and its connection to the books cover. We then decided that an edition of the paperback cover would make an interesting poster/ silk screen edition. The image was printed in two colors by a fine art press in Detroit, Michigan in 2009. A total edition of 50 copies, signed and numbered by James Hoff and Cary Loren.

The edition has a hand-drawn “Hitler” mustache put on with a magic marker, that makes each a unique multiple.

First published in 1966, this celebrated book – Sontag’s first collection of essays – quickly became a modern classic, and has had an enormous influence in America and abroad on thinking about the arts and contemporary culture. As well as the title essay and the famous “Notes on Camp,” Against Interpretation includes original and provocative discussions of Sartre, Simone Weil, Godard, Beckett, science-fiction movies, psychoanalysis, and contemporary religious thinking. The most recent edition features a new afterword by Sontag.

“Susan Sontag’s essays are great interpretations, and even fulfillments, of what is really going on.”
—Carlos Fuentes

“She has come to symbolize the writer and thinker in many variations: as analyst, rhapsodist, and roving eye, as public scold and portable conscience.” —Time Magazine

“A dazzling intellectual performance.” —Vogue

Susan Sontag (1933-2004) was one of the guiding lights and inspirations behind the formation of the Destroy All Monsters collective. Her essays “On Camp”, “Flaming Creatures”, “Against Fascism” and the books “Against Interpretation”, “Under the Sign of Saturn” and “On Photography” are among the favorites of founding member Cary Loren. Sontag’s essay on Jack Smith, prompted Loren to communicate with Smith, move to Ann Arbor and begin the Hill Street Theater. Sontag is one of the most important philosophers and thinkers to emerge from the United States in the 1960s.

$ 400.00