Abolishing art’s transcendence destroys rather than enables art’s radical potential.
Evidence
Iconoclasm of this sort alarmed Adorno, since he regarded it as a parody of the transcendence of art and as an abolition of art which was trapped in the illusion that decisive changes were immediately possible and which destroyed the chances for a radicalizing transformation of art. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 680
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to Adorno’s critique of the culture industry and the affirmative character of culture, already flagged elsewhere in this book. — connects to: Art loses its critical friction when it becomes purely self-referential. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2731; Avant-garde attempts to destroy art-as-institution misfire into merely revolutionizing art itself. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 237; Poptimism’s leveling of art and commerce destroyed art’s autonomy — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 844 (+6 more)
- DEFINE: “Transcendence of art” is Adorno’s technical term for art’s capacity to point beyond existing reality; the parodic version immediately collapses that distance.
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Art loses its critical friction when it becomes purely self-referential. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2731; Avant-garde attempts to destroy art-as-institution misfire into merely revolutionizing art itself. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 237; Poptimism’s leveling of art and commerce destroyed art’s autonomy — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 844 (+6 more)
Broader Connections
- Modern art renounces mediation in favor of directness and literalism.
#complicates(0.78) — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 19