Adorno located society’s crucial problems within autonomous art as a model of salvation

Evidence

This insight caused Benjamin to stop looking for the solution where it could not conceivably be found, namely in autonomous art. Adorno, on the other hand, saw precisely in the gap between the reflexive masses and autonomous art a challenge for the latter to preserve that gap for as long as the masses were reflexiveand to do in art today what a correct society would later do as routine. The problem for him was not how to bring art and the masses together, but how to make it plausible for autonomous art to be an arena in which society’s crucial problems are recognized and in which it is possible to produce a model of salvation. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 875

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies Adorno’s distinctive stance on autonomous art versus Benjamin’s turn away from it.
• XREF: connects to: Adorno treated artistic modernism as anticipating a free society — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2229; Adorno held that art anticipating despair moves reality toward change — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2236; Adorno’s aesthetics unify the critiques of nature-domination and administered society — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2736 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Adorno’s negative dialectics located emancipation’s hints in modern art’s distortion #corroborates (0.85) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 380
• Adorno’s aesthetics unify the critiques of nature-domination and administered society #complicates (0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2736
• Adorno believed a knowledge of art made the turn to social theory necessary. #qualifies (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1257
• Adorno chose substantive philosophy over a material theory of society #complicates (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2528