Commodity character in art includes concealing the labor that produced the work.

Evidence

In Wagner’s music, as opposed to jazz, Adorno saw precisely in its moments of degeneration something good as well, namely an abandonment of the ego which was more than mere masochism: aspects of a form of self-abandonment which pointed beyond reified existence. But in regarding the structural law governing Wagner’s music as the concealment of the process of production by means of the outward appearance of the product, he saw this music, too, as having taken on a commodity character. Its commodity character involved more than mere deceptive wish-fulfilment on the part of the buyer; it also involved a concealment of the work which had produced the commodity. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 234

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sharpens Adorno’s technical sense of ‘commodity character’ beyond deceptive wish-fulfilment to the concealment of production itself.
• XREF: connects to: The commodity form’s ersion of labor extends into art itself — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 777; Commodity fetishism conceals labor as the reality underlying the appearance of goods. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 577; The work’s surface is structurally mystifying, not merely misleading — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 785 (+3 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: The commodity form’s ersion of labor extends into art itself — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 777; Commodity fetishism conceals labor as the reality underlying the appearance of goods. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 577; The work’s surface is structurally mystifying, not merely misleading — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 785 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Commodity fetishism conceals labor as the reality underlying the appearance of goods. #corroborates (0.92) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 577