Genuine artistic negation requires being saturated with tradition first

Evidence

It is precisely to this society that they owe that sensuous culture and impatient subtlety which brought them into conflict with Viennese conformism. The boldness of artistic renewal joined hands with proud negligence. In spite of all irony and scepticism, numerous categories of a still firmly integrated social and spiritual order were accepted. These categories provided a not inconsiderable prerequisite for the insubordinate tenderness of this generation. It was necessary, as it were, to be satiated with tradition in order really to be able to negate it and to be able to turn the unique vital force of tradition against ossification and self-satisfaction. It is only where that which was is still strong enough to form the forces within the subject and at the same time to oppose them that the production of that which has not yet been seems possible. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 165

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Art’s celebration of pure making cannot escape the purposefulness it denies — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 251; Art is not graspable by pure contemplation apart from its tradition — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 246; Authentic artistry requires self-transcendence, which narcissism precludes — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1818 (+4 more)