Aesthetic Theory (Volume 88) by Theodor W. Adorno

Important among the theories of the Left are those of the representatives of Critical Theory such as Lukács, Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse and Bürger. The review of the theories opens with analyses of Ortega y Gassett and Poggioli’s proposals dating from 19 respectively. This includes historical references to the emergence of the modern concept of art and of the philosophical discipline of aesthetics.

Art is first of all put in its place by locating it in the context of the institutional framework of modern society. The focus is on modern autonomous art and the historical avant-garde art movements. This document critically reviews the theories of the avant-garde of both the Left and the Right put forward between the 1920s – the time of the vigorous assertion of the avant-garde – and the late 1970s – the beginning of the conservative turn led by Regan and Thatcher and reflected in cultural, change. Through a sustained examination of art’s essential relation to what Adorno calls “natural-history,” the problems of contemporary art and aesthetics are then situated within the wider context of art’s relationship to a history of domination. In the process, it demonstrates that many of the most pressing problems in contemporary art are integral to Adorno’s aesthetic theory and that it is precisely at those points where his thought is today regarded as most problematic that it is often most instructive. The present paper reconstructs the stakes of this legitimation crisis and sets Adorno’s writings on art and aesthetics in relation to some of the most significant debates in recent art criticism. Adorno and creating a conceptual discourse more appropriate to the current state of contemporary art.

For many in the field of philosophical aesthetics, this means going beyond the work of Theodor W. In marking this distinction, reference is often made to the obsolescence of once-dominant aesthetic categories and the need for breaking with aesthetic theories traditionally allied with artistic modernism.

That contemporary art is fundamentally irreducible to modernist art and aesthetics has become a commonplace of contemporary art theory and criticism.

Aesthetic Theory (Volume 88) by Theodor W. Adorno