Have you tried reading Adorno??? Here's a review of one of his books:
Theodor Adorno's "Aesthetic Theory" is in one respect
about the end of art;it was written partially
in response to his friend Walter Benjamin. Benjamin's
views on the ends of art and the
pontentialities, the encrusted meanings waiting to me
unleashed in mass produced art. Benjamin
had thought there was an emancipatory moment in art in now
the age of mechanical production.
Since Adorno had outlived Benjamin until 1969, Adorno's
task was to furnish us with the
conception of art now as a pennyless child gazing into the
candystore, an art in exile, an art where
the disintegration of cultural pillars have long eroded
away. Schoenberg's varigated orchestral
scores was the ultimate rebellion in a private world, the
subject at last trying to find truth and
resemblance within the aesthetic crumbs leftover from the
19th century.
Adorno's " Aesthetic Theory" is not only a treatise, a
counterflow, a tone-poem of fragments,
symphonic forms exploded into motives and cells of
thought, it is a bridge between all
arts,although the relativily new form of film is
neglected. Adorno had thought this fragmentary style
of writing as satisfying with the collapse of
system-building within philosophic thought.The
aesthetic strategy of Adorno's thought then is one which
interfaces, interrelates, crosses itself in its
various readings of art. And the reader expects this
complexity to be apparent. Robert
Hullot-Kentor's translation is indeed something which
encourages this reading of Adorno. He
allows us to enter Adorno's thought in its full
complexity. So, graphically he allows the undivision
of paragraphs to remain as Adorno had originally composed
in draft form. Adorno's thought
continually overflows,continually creates layers,
multilayers of references. Hullot-Kentor's term
"paratactical form" is the localized struture of Adorno's
thought and if form at all survives it is
within this density of Adorno's thought and not any
external structure. The first English translation
by C. Lenhardt(1984)! maintains these divisions within the
body of text and is still indespensible
despite all the American jargon.Adorno's thought on first
encounter needs all the divisions one can
find,but once learned you can move beyond it into
Hullot-Kentor's. The introduction to
Hullot-Kentor provides a good history of Adorno's work
with aesthetics a subject he came to late
within these treatise-like dimensions. Adorno has been the
focus of numerous studies, Frederic
Jameson,Martin Jay, Albrecht Wellmer,Peter Berger, as well
as art critics Donald Kuspit.
Lambert Zuidervaart has a book-length critique of
"Aesthetic Theory". All have used Adorno's
thought to advance a particular cause mostly
justified.Jameson's diatribes with the post-structural
cadre for one, Wellmer in making a bridge to the
communicative theories of Adorno's former
assistant Jurgan Habermas. Who has been left out of this
theoretical landscape? has been the
practicing artist, and understandibly so for those I've
mentioned are not burdened with the daily
committment to creation of the artistic object and the set
of philosophic problematics that entails.
As a practicing composer myself I came to Adorno long ago,
his "Philosophy of Modern Music"
was a seminal text, a breath of fresh air from the
self-serving pitch-set-theory ideas of academia.
In fact Adorno's legacy is only now entering the
mainstream of thought in musicology, with
profound contributions into the creativity,and historical
dimensions in opera,social sub-themes in
the 19th century or new music. "Aesthetic Theory" is a
fundamental resource for the composer,
the poet, the performing artist,especially within the
collapse of genre distinctions in today's art.
Within the complexity of Adorno's thought we find the
crossing of genres. Although he had
structured his thought for quite different reasons for the
search in locating truth and meaning and
non-meaning wherever it may reside.In "Aesthetic
Theory"although you may only find the grand
auteurs,Kafka,! Mahler,Wedekind,Proust,certainly
Beckett(where Adorno had found a pinnicle of
his idea of the disintegration of value) we today can find
parallels for creativity in the collapse of
genre distinctions today. Certainly the positive side of
postmodernity has been the proclivity
toward research. A composer for instance may learn the
complexity of Central American culture
as pre-compositional studies for a set of piano preludes,
a wonderful enrichment of the genre. If
nothing else Adorno's thought compells one toward research
and the meaning in art from a
conceptual global perspective. For that's the definition
of truth that Adorno adheres to. Truth must
reside for everyone, truth is not an elitist endeavor. The
truth content in a Beethoven symphony for
instance is in its relative accessible directness of
musical gesture. You, anyone understands his
musical motives immediately. It was this clearness of
meaning which produced a conceptual
impasse within for instance Mahler who could not resolve
the dilemma of the symphonic form
apart from accreting its length. Today then a composer in
his/her search for instance can no longer
ignore the complex use of text, and the challenge that
represents, or a playwright in the subtle use
of lighting. Every creative artist must explore his/her
creativity beyond the four-corners of the
page, and I'd like to offer this perspective as one part
of Adorno's legacy.
Carolina.
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