Adorno and Art: Bring Something To The Table!

A brief overview of Adorno's Aesthetics.

Recently, I've been influenced by two of my friends, Bianca and Corbin, to revisit my aesthetics, (philosophy of art), literature I had in my library; shout-out to them, they both do AMAZING work and one day they'll produce groundbreaking articles, (and books!) on aesthetics. I began by picking up my first ever philosophy of art book called, "Why Is That Art?", which provides a general overview of the history of aesthetics starting with Plato and ending with the post-modernists. It gives great small summaries on each thinker and it is a perfect introduction to anyone familiar or not familiar with philosophy, (it was one of my course sources for my CEGEP introduction class to aesthetics, and the purchase link will be below)!

Now there's a good chance that you may not know me personally, but if you've been on any of my social media accounts, well you've noticed I have a tendency to yell "ABOLISH EVERYTHING, BURN IT ALL DOWN, WHAT EVEN IS MONEY??" In other words, I am a pretty radical thinker, I definitely subscribe to many neo-communist philosophy/radical socialist theories. So when I stumbled across Theodor W. Adorno's aesthetics, I was HOOKED!!

Most of the aesthetics I covered in university happened to be either in ancient philosophy, or the extremely small paragraphs/pages dedicated to political aesthetics in political theory classes, (yeah, time to change the curriculum am I right??). Although aesthetics and art history were my strengths in CEGEP, that was a whole 5 years ago, so when I stumbled across neo-communist aesthetics this past few weeks, it felt like the first time and I was immediately taken in.

I think Adorno's work is so important, (more than ever with the internet), which gives us unprecedented access to art, art production, and an overly-saturated marketplace for art. On first glance, these things are not bad per say, especially as a local artist myself, the online access to art and the art marketplace is the only way for small artists to survive. In fact, I doubt Adorno would have a problem with small artists trying to utilize this new marketplace for their livelihood. Instead, what this immediate access calls into question is the matter of hyper-consumption, the principle of exchange, and most importantly the utility of art/the purpose of art.

Before you click the "back" arrow, slow your roll, there's no way I can break down these three extensive topics of Adorno's life-long philosophical work. Let's just do a quick overview, in the hopes that you'll leave with a small understanding of how powerful studying the arts may be, and, hopefully, incite you to read some Adorno!!

Before exploring his aesthetics, let us understand the context his theories stand in. Set in the early midst of the Second World War, and then followed by the geo-political setting of the Cold War, Adorno's philosophy scrutinizes his late-stage capitalist era, in which he witnessed the boom of media beginning with the radio and then the television across the world; this era was the birth of popular media. With huge conglomerations of wealth and capital amassed by the economic superpowers in the twentieth century, (e.g. the US, Western European Powers, Japan), as well as the incredibly fast technological advancements of the century, Adorno could not help but question the lasting presence of hunger and poverty, the presence of (disproportionate) human suffering; with all the wealth amassed from the new connectivity across the world, as well as the technological advancement of our time, how can these human-made crises run so rampant across the world? Adorno found an answer, an answer which most of us agree with now in the 21st century: capitalist relations run society, they dominate society and society's interests.

Capitalist relations dominate society and society's actions. In other words, the way we organize ourselves and the things society strive for are all for the sake of exchange values, i.e. the worth of our economic exchanges, both on micro and macro scales, is what orients the world. We give the utmost importance to exchange values, because we want to keep these exchange values as our main priority. What's more, wealth becomes centralized across the world, but this wealth is more often than not kept within small geo-political spheres, and often times hereditary pockets of wealth.

Alas, Adorno goes in depth on what he calls "the principle of exchange" and elaborates on its significance, but at this point I'd like to jump to his aesthetic theory. Art in his period was becoming commodified, with the rise of television, art began to be entertainment-oriented. Again, there is so much to extrapolate on Adorno's critique of popular culture and how it strips people of their ability to recognize their own needs, but the article is running off long enough. What you need to appreciate is that popular media actively dulls itself to transmit base entertainment, all for the sake of commerciality. In our current day and age, the internet enhances commerciality even more as it forces artists to produce the most commercially successful craft in order for it to reach an audience. In simpler words, the internet has given such unlimited access to art that it has become over-saturated to the point that you can only rely on search engines to find/buy/consume any type of art. However, these search engines work on specific criteria of traction, keywords, aesthetic paradigms, and of course content, so that all art and artisanal products being sold/showed online are filtered through these very few criteria, and only if your product "sells"/gets consumed at a high level, will it be easily accessible to a wider audience. Henceforth, the exchange value of art becomes the formative frame in which most art moulds itself into, and there a never-stopping loop of base art gets consumed for the sake of base art.

We've barely brushed the surface of Adorno's depth, but let's try to understand what he thinks art ought to do, and how art can successfully do what it must. Adorno believes that art has to be society's antithesis, it both reflects its social and political context, but it also ought to bring something to the table as well. The context of an art work may often, if not always, contradict its moral/ethical message, for example Kendrick Lamar's notorious album "To Pimp A Butterfly" is an album that critiques the commodification of Blackness and Black art, but it obviously propagates this message byway of his record label, who makes billions of dollars commodifying Blackness, and in this example specifically, it managed to commodify part of the Black struggle in the sale of his album. However true these contextual contradictions may be, these conflicts do not necessarily belong to the work of art itself, but rather they are the result of the problems/tensions that exist in society to this day. Let's use the TPAB example again, Kendrick made tens of millions of dollars from TPAB, however the current racial, economic and political context of the United-States of America actively disallows Black people from finding any form of minute economic success without somehow contradicting their struggle for racial equity. It was built that way, and anyone would be a fool to blame Black artists for existing in an economic framework that they are victims of. So mainstream Black political art cannot be made or consumed without the commodification of Blackness, but authentic Black artistry conscientiously puts that into evidence.

I am sure there are many criticisms that we can pin on Kendrick Lamar and other mainstream Black artists, that's for sure, and Adorno would probably not support mainstream consumption of any form of art; and I agree with whatever criticism may arise. The point stands to demonstrate the clash between the context behind a piece of art and what it brings to the table. Efficient authentic art will force the consumer to be confronted with these social and political contradictions, which stands at the opposite of kitsch or popular art. This easily-accessible art subconsciously sells you these base feelings of "pleasure", "entertainment", and, in a way, make you believe that this is the type of art that you need, as if mind-less leisure is the only type of leisure that one needs. Of course, in this (even later) stage of capitalism, one can argue that we are hyper-productive in every other aspect of our lives and that we need brain-numbing leisure, and I'm not opposed to that thought, it just does not seem to address the real problems of consumption and exchange value that Adorno speaks of.

On a last note, I'm no Adorno expert, in fact I'd like to dedicate my summer to reading Adorno's work, (I'll be getting some physical copies of Aesthetic Theory and Dialectic Enlightenment), but I'd be interested in making an article on The Radio Research Project, which, ironically, Adorno was part of and contributed to his radicalization. Let me know in the comments if you'd want me to cover it!

What do you think of Adorno's work? Is there something I missed, or something I badly interpreted? Let me know in the comments!!

Link to "Why Is That Art?": https://www.chegg.com/textbooks/why-is-that-art-2nd-edition-9780199758807-0199758808