In this blog post, we will examine the essence and social role of art, focusing on Adorno’s concepts of “identity” and “difference,” and why he criticized popular art as a commodity for consumption in capitalist society.
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 composition to its expression. He believed that the standardization of popular art also standardized individuals’ appreciation, making their individuality indistinguishable from that of others. In particular, in a capitalist society that reduces everything to the exchange value of commodities, popular art acts as a mechanism that reduces even individual identity to a commodity.
Adorno’s criticism of the inherent limitations of popular art leads to a profound reflection on contemporary art. He believed that when art loses its function of reflecting and criticizing social reality, it loses its meaning as art. Adorno argues that popular art is not merely entertainment, but has become a tool that dominates people’s thoughts and emotions and paralyzes their sense of social criticism. This is an important point that makes us reconsider the role and value of art in contemporary society.
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 reduction. Therefore, art must refuse to become a beautiful commodity desired by the masses and must be ugly and unpleasant in and of 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 us 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 dissimilarities. 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 as its very attribute, as the ideal form that art should pursue. He warned against art becoming a commodity that satisfies the desires of the masses and emphasized the autonomy and dissimilarity of art. This perspective reflects his philosophical belief that art should not simply provide aesthetic pleasure, but should also function as a tool for social criticism and resistance.
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 while also being detached from society and confronting its essence. His aesthetics provides a critical perspective on existing art. For example, if we interpret Cézanne’s painting of apples through Adorno’s aesthetics, it would be nothing more than an expression of a “beautiful illusion” divorced from the essence of society.
However, Cézanne’s work can be seen 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, or in other words, making the intangible tangible. In other words, Cézanne’s work is not a specific apple that can be seen with the naked eye, 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 intertwined with it, and the artist’s thoughts as he gazes at them.
Adorno believes that art should allow viewers to experience the essence of the world as captured by the artist. However, by limiting this aesthetic experience to the absurdity 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 subjectivity.
On the other hand, Adorno’s aesthetics greatly narrows the scope of art. In other words, while he criticizes the violence of identification, he claims 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, which conveys messages of social resistance, even popular art that follows the logic of capital can perform a critical function in society.
In conclusion, Adorno’s theory of art provides an important critical perspective on contemporary art and the culture industry, but there are also criticisms that his perspective is overly restrictive. Considering the diversity and plurality of art and the fact that various forms of art can play a role in social criticism and resistance, Adorno’s theory may not fully reflect the complexity and multi-layered nature of contemporary art. Therefore, when discussing the nature and function of art, it is necessary to refer to Adorno’s critical perspective while also exploring various artistic expressions and their possibilities.
