Adorno held that advanced art serves society by ignoring its audience.

Evidence

In his article `On the Social Position of Music’ in the first issue of the journal, 113 Adorno had emphasized that music would fulfil its social function best if it marched forward in the immanent development of its problems, without gazing outwards towards society, and did not allow itself to be inhibited by the state of consciousness of the proletariat. The proletariat was crippled by class domination. In this Adorno was merely maintaining what he had once learned from Benjamin himself. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 212

Categorization

• DEFINE: Names Adorno’s early aesthetic position: immanent development of artistic problems, inward-turned, deliberately uninhibited by proletarian consciousness.
• XREF: Connects forward to Adorno’s later attacks on committed art and to the Frankfurt School’s recurring autonomy-versus-engagement dispute. — connects to: Adorno’s aesthetic method skipped societal mediation by folding all social content into single artworks — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 882; Adorno rejected measuring audience reactions apart from cultural content’s objectivity — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 663; Adorno’s Marxist musical theory avoided analyzing actual sociological ties between music and society. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 368 (+4 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Adorno’s aesthetic method skipped societal mediation by folding all social content into single artworks — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 882; Adorno rejected measuring audience reactions apart from cultural content’s objectivity — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 663; Adorno’s Marxist musical theory avoided analyzing actual sociological ties between music and society. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 368 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Adorno’s Marxist musical theory avoided analyzing actual sociological ties between music and society. #complicates (0.70) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 368