Mechanical reproduction of beauty destroys the unconscious idolatry that made beauty vital

Evidence

In a phase when the subject is capitulating before the alienated predominance of things, his readiness to discover value or beauty everywhere shows the resignation both of his critical faculties and of the interpreting imagination inseparable from them. Those who find everything beautiful are now in danger of finding nothing beautiful. The universality of beauty can communicate itself to the subject in no other way than in obsession with the particular. No gaze attains beauty that is not accompanied by indifference, indeed almost by contempt, for all that lies outside the object contemplated. And it is only infatuation, the unjust disregard for the claims of every existing thing, that does justice to what exists. In so far as the existent is accepted, in its one-sidedness, for what it is, its one-sidedness is comprehended as its being, and reconciled. The eyes that lose themselves to the one and only beauty are sabbath eyes. They save in their object something of the calm of its day of creation. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 87 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Mass culture is a system of signals that signals itself. The millions who belong to the underclasses formerly excluded from the enjoyment of cultural goods but now ensnared provide a welcome pretext for this new orientation towards information. But this grandiose system of elucidation, transmission and rapid familiarization in the sudden shock of imposition destroys everything that the ideology of cultural products claims to promote so widely. The jokes which were made in the symptomatic programme called ‘Information Please’ not only express the truth about the system of information but also the truth about what the information is about. Information emphatically promotes the decay of the aesthetic image. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 128 (#expands, via linked claim)

The disinterested pleasure that according to Kant is aroused by works of art, can only be understood by virtue of historical antitheses still at work in each aesthetic object. The thing disinterestedly contemplated pleases because it once claimed the utmost interest and thus precluded contemplation. The latter is a triumph of enlightened self-discipline. Gold and precious stones, in the perception of which beauty and luxury still coexist undistinguished, were honoured as magical. The radiance they reflect was thought their own essence. Under their power falls whatever is touched by their light. This was early used in the mastering of nature. Jewels were seen as instruments for subjugating the course of the world by its own cunningly usurped power. The magic adhered to the illusion of omnipotence. This illusion was dispelled by mind’s self-enlightenment, but the magic has survived as the power of radiant things over men, in whom they once instilled a dread that continues to hold their eyes spellbound, even after they have seen through its claim to domination. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 250 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Beauty’s powerlessness becomes the negative image of redemptive hope — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 250; Universal appreciation of beauty signals resignation and empties beauty itself — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 87; Mass information systems destroy the aesthetic experience they claim to promote — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 128 (+12 more)

Broader Connections

• Universal appreciation of beauty signals resignation and empties beauty itself #corroborates (0.82) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 87
• Mass information systems destroy the aesthetic experience they claim to promote #expands (0.80) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 128
• Kantian disinterested aesthetic pleasure descends from magical fetish worship #expands (0.78) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 250
• Beauty’s powerlessness becomes the negative image of redemptive hope #complicates (0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 250
• Pleasure historically mediated by apparatus collapses into a single technical object #corroborates (0.75) — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 376
• Capitalist commodification displaces the aesthetic value of art #expands (0.75) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 69