Vienna’s cultural avant-garde permanently fixed Adorno’s uncompromising cultural elitism

Evidence

His three years in Vienna seem to have eradicated much of his shyness, but new confidence did not mean a significant lessening of his high seriousness or his allegiance to the most demanding of cultural forms. If anything, his frequent attendance at readings by Karl Kraus, that most unrelenting upholder of cultural standards, and his participation in the arcane musical discussions of the Viennese avant-garde only reinforced his predisposition in that direction. Never during the remainder of his life would Adorno abandon his cultural elitism. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 143

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Avant-gardes shared an anti-bourgeois stance against market culture — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 217; The avant-garde attacked art’s institutional status, not merely artistic styles — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 233; Adorno’s Vienna years fixed Schoenberg’s music as central to his aesthetics — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 326

Broader Connections

• Avant-gardes shared an anti-bourgeois stance against market culture #corroborates (0.75) — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 217
• The avant-garde attacked art’s institutional status, not merely artistic styles #expands (0.72) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 233