/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.2349663]

So.

Can someone explain to me, what Adorno is all about?

"In Aesthetic Theory, Adorno is concerned not only with such standard aesthetic preoccupations as the function of beauty and sublimity in art,[2] but with the relations between art and society. He feels that modern art's freedom from such restrictions as cult and imperial functions that had plagued previous eras of art has led to art's expanded critical capacity and increased formal autonomy. With this expanded autonomy comes art's increased responsibility for societal commentary. However, Adorno does not feel that overtly politicized content is art's greatest critical strength: rather, he champions a more abstracted type of "truth-content" (Warheitsgehalt).[1] Unlike Kantian or idealist aesthetics, Adorno's aesthetics locates truth-content within the art object, rather than in the perception of the subject.[3] Such content is, however, affected by art's self-consciousness at the hands of its necessary distance from society, which is perceptible in such instances as the dissonances inherent in modern art. Throughout, Adorno praises dramatist Samuel Beckett, to whom the book was dedicated."

It loses me on truth-content ...

[Anonymous No.2349700]

Adorno's extremely abstract. Truth-content will only makes sense later.

[Anonymous No.2349705]

NOBODY KNOWS

[Anonymous No.2349709]

>>2349700

I'm thinking of picking up the book soon, but I got really curious about him, and thought I'd get a quick overview for now ... Not happening then, I guess? :/

Thanks anyway~

[Anonymous No.2349710]

http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheEmperorsNewClothes_e.html

[Anonymous No.2349724]

Adorno believes that art contains inherent values (ie truth) that is seperate and independent from the person perceiving it. This artistic truth is non-discursive, meaning, roughly speaking, not open to discussion but absolute. It reconciles man (as detached) and nature. It is opposite to ideology and commodity production. His two main categories are the "beauty" (Schönheit) and "sublimeness"[?] (Erhabenheit).

Aesthetic Theory was his last work, and in it he proves that he is essentially conservative. Art has an utopian function for him. He refuses modernity and its way to mass produce culture and turn it into a commodity. he is sad that in the course of the 19th century the concept of pure, transcendent beauty in art has been lost.

Yeah, he is pretty much a backwards asshole extolling lofty farts.

[Anonymous No.2349726]

>>2349709
turn to Walter Benjamin. More worthwhile, less of a pedantic asshole, more informed about history.

[Anonymous No.2349741]

>>2349726
Walter Benjamin is good. Personally still want to read Adorno for his music obsession.

[Anonymous No.2349744]

i think he is talking about formalism

the idea is that the work of art itself is what is aesthetical and the content is secundary

[Anonymous No.2349749]

>>2349741
you knoe adorno also composed?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FO2np13ZVJs

[Anonymous No.2349789]

>>>pure, transcendent beauty

Someone who used Schoenberg as a role model for artists would not use terms such as these. Beauty in the classicist tradition is evaluated according to harmony and symmetry. Adorno appreciated dissonance as well as harmony. Sublimity is related to Kant's notion of that which escapes our abilities of representation, that which invokes shock and awe.

Truth content is related to the objectivity of the art object. It is not merely the expression of the artist's individuality, but the expression of a whole bevy of socio-historical forces. It's truth-content is immanent, not transcendent. The art-object concretizes socio-historical forces. Commoditization, via exchange value, tends to steal objects objectivity from them. That is, they become mean to some other end -- the realization of value, for example -- rather than things-in-themselves. For Adorno art's function is to remind us of the promise of happiness.

And it would really be foolish to discount Adorno in favour of Benjamin, seeing as the two fundamentally shaped each others' thought in their conversations and correspondence.