In this blog post, we will examine whether art can maintain its autonomy and criticality in a capitalist society, focusing on Adorno’s aesthetic theory.
Adorno pointed out that popular art mass-produced by the culture industry has not only lost its essence as art by becoming a commodity for profit maximization, but also conceals the contradictions and absurdities of modern society. In Adorno’s view, popular art is nothing more than a commodity produced through standardization, from its creation to its expression. He believed that the standardization of popular art also standardizes individuals’ appreciation, making their individuality indistinguishable from that of others. In particular, in a capitalist society that seeks to reduce everything to the exchange value of commodities, popular art acts as a mechanism that reduces even individual identity to a commodity.
Adorno defines the tendency to unify different value systems into a single value system as identity, and the tendency to reject reduction to a single value system as non-identity. He argues that art must possess this non-identity that rejects such reduction. Therefore, art must refuse to become a beautiful commodity desired by the masses and must be ugly and unpleasant in itself. For him, art must allow viewers to experience the essence of the world as seen by the artist. Art must be a medium that allows people to experience the absurdity of modern society by appearing in an atypical form that refuses to be standardized.
Adorno highly values avant-garde art, such as Schoenberg’s music, for resisting identification while not directly expressing resistance or enlightenment. This is because he believes that directly expressing resistance or enlightenment has an inherent violent intention to identify non-identity. Just as Schoenberg’s music, full of dissonance, made listeners feel uncomfortable, art must resist the violence of identification by allowing viewers to experience the non-identity revealed in it.
For Adorno, art is a social product, and therefore aesthetics exists to read the painful state of society deposited in works of art. He presented avant-garde art, which has dissimilarity itself as its attribute, as the ideal form that art should pursue. Adorno’s aesthetics is positively evaluated in that it pursued the autonomy of art through the relationship between art and society. This is because he believed that art should be social and at the same time detached from society in order to face the essence of society. His aesthetics provides a critical perspective on existing art. For example, if we interpret Cézanne’s painting of apples through Adorno’s aesthetics, the painting would be nothing more than an expression of a “beautiful illusion” divorced from the essence of society.
However, Cézanne’s work can be interpreted as mimesis, expressing the artist’s subjective impressions through colors such as red and gray and geometric shapes. Mimesis means reproducing the subject’s perception of the world, that is, making the imperceptible perceptible. In other words, Cézanne’s work is not a specific apple that can be seen, but a reproduction of the true nature of the world as captured by the artist’s gaze, that is, the vitality of nature, the lives of the farmers involved, and the artist’s thoughts as he gazes at them.
Adorno believes that art should enable viewers to experience the essence of the world as captured by the artist. However, by limiting this aesthetic experience to the absurdities of modern society, he limits true art to the experience of the non-formality of the sensory object itself. Ultimately, Adorno’s aesthetics denies mimesis as the reproduction of the subjective.
On the other hand, Adorno’s aesthetics greatly narrows the scope of art. In other words, while he criticizes the violence of identification, he asserts that only the avant-garde art he pursues is true art, and attempts to identify art from the perspective of avant-garde art. In particular, this deprives various forms of art in reality of the opportunity to be discovered. As Benjamin pointed out, it is possible to discover a new artistic spirit even in photographs that were taken by mistake and lack any subjectivity on the part of the photographer. In addition, as in the case of popular music that conveys messages of social resistance, even popular art that follows the logic of capital can perform a critical function in society.
Adorno’s theory must be understood in the context of his time. As a thinker active during the rapid expansion of capitalism in the early 20th century, he witnessed the development of mass media and the subsequent expansion of the culture industry. At that time, popular art was mass-produced using new technologies, which enabled a new form of cultural consumption. Adorno saw these changes as the commercialization and standardization of art, which he considered to be factors that hindered critical thinking among the masses.
However, today’s popular art exists in various forms, and the development of digital technology has created an environment where anyone can participate in artistic creation. The Internet and social media have made it easier for individuals to express their voices, which is creating new forms of art that are different from traditional commercial art. These changes have sparked debate over whether Adorno’s theory is still valid in contemporary society.
Adorno’s critical theory provides important insights even today, but it has limitations in explaining the diversity and complexity of contemporary art. The critical perspective based on his theory is still valid, but we also need to seek new art theories and approaches that reflect the changes in contemporary society and technological developments. It is important to recognize that popular art can be distorted by the logic of capital, but at the same time, it can also be used as a tool for social resistance and change.
