thumb|The cover of Against Interpretation (1966), which contains Sontag's essay
"Notes on 'Camp'" is a 1964 essay by Susan Sontag that brought the aesthetic sensibility known as "camp" to mainstream consciousness. Oates characterizes "On Camp" as "both opinion essay and cultural criticism of a high order."
Background
"Notes on 'Camp was first published as an essay in December 1964, and was her first contribution to the Partisan Review. The essay attracted interest in Sontag.
The essay was republished in 1966 in Sontag's debut collection of essays, Against Interpretation. The essay considers meanings and connotations of the word "camp".
Synopsis
Fifty-eight "notes" constitute the body of the essay and are dedicated to playwright and social critic Oscar Wilde. The notes, numbered consecutively, are interspersed with epigrams from Wilde's writings.
Christopher Isherwood is mentioned in Sontag's essay: "Apart from a lazy two-page sketch in Christopher Isherwood's novel The World in the Evening (1954), [camp] has hardly broken into print."</blockquote>
Then examples are given: Mozart, El Greco and Dostoevsky are camp; Beethoven, Flaubert and Rembrandt are not.
Legacy
The 2019 haute couture art exhibit Camp: Notes on Fashion, presented by the Anna Wintour Costume Center at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, was built around Sontag's essay by Andrew Bolton, the Wendy Yu Curator in Charge of the Costume Institute.
See also
- Kitsch
- Gay culture
- High culture
- Low culture
- Cinephilia
Footnotes
Sources
- Oates, Joyce Carol and Atwan, Robert. 2000. The Best American Essays of the Century. pp. 327-341. Joyce Carol Oates, editor, Robert Atwan co-editor. Houghton Mifflin Company, New York
External links
- Full text of ‘Notes on “Camp”’