Reviews for Aesthetic theory

The average rating for Aesthetic theory based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-01-15 00:00:00 Matthew Shea Do not let the title mislead you: This is not light reading. Aesthetic Theory is like an endless search for what exactly art is. Why do people bother making music, writing, painting. What is art trying to accomplish, why is it there at all. Art is the elusive main character that nearly four hundred pages of dense theory attempts to grasp. On a grand level art, according to Adorno, is (1) against the world and polemical towards society ("by crystallizing itself as something unique to itself, rather than complying with existing social norms and qualifying as 'socially useful,' it [Art] criticizes society by merely existing, for which puritans of all stripes condemn it"); (2) inherently affirmative (positive), and (3) aloof from the "culture industry" and commoditization. The culture industry, imbued in art hatred, is what contributes to the marketing and unnecessary aura and debris that surrounds the artwork. Like when you hear about a given Big-Name Author, a photo or a news story might come to mind or his charming demeanor in interviews instead of the actual text of his works. Or the glossy photos of authors on the backs of novels by NYC/London/Paris photography firms, which epitomize the culture industry Adorno despises. Adorno was extremely sensitive about consumerism. For him, it threatened everything. ("The marrow of experience has been sucked out; there is none, not even that apparently set at a remove from commerce, that has not been gnawed away.") Part of this comes from being an immigrant and having to adjust to the garishness and product-mania of American culture, I think. So big questions are addressed, like: Is art supposed to enjoyed? The answer is no. "The more artworks are understood, the less they are enjoyed." Art is not just a fancy kind of amusement. The "enjoyment" Adorno is criticizing is the fixation on what do I get out of it or valuing art only insofar as it's a good time. "Whoever disappears into the artwork thereby gains dispensation from the impoverishment of a life that is always too little." This seems to be a recurring motif in Western thought. Writing is there because of the inherently dissatisfying nature of existence. Or because the Golden Age is gone or Utopia has not come to being yet. (See the end of Eagleton's Literary Theory for a perfect expression of such a utopist yearning: Eagleton states that if social conditions were able to reach a state that was mutually beneficial for everyone (Eagleton is thinking of a Marxist Paradise) he would be able to drop his pen and do something "more worthwhile" with his time. I can't imagine what this "more worthwhile" thing might be). Existence alone should be enough'-but it's not. Derrida's Of Grammatology, which obsesses over Rousseau's writings about writing covers this pathology to a maddening degree. Rousseau called writing the dangerous supplement. He was addicted to writing, even though he saw it as nothing more than a debased representation of speech, or a corruption of pure presence. New paragraph. Though Adorno would never put it this way, art is also transcendental: "Art is the semblance of what is beyond death's reach." Real art gives you a glimpse beyond the prison of selfhood. "This experience is contrary to the weakening of the I that the culture industry manipulates." So the culture industry (as anyone can see if you look at the ads in the train) continually encourages and reaffirms a celebration of Self with a deluge of imagery and text addressed at once directly to You, but also at everyone else at the same time. It is You who is lionized, and every I is encouraged to fixate on itself and its wants (yes, paradoxical that everyone's uniqueness is appealed to, that the way to "express yourself" is to buy a product that millions of others will buy). Advertising encourages self-adoration and self-fixation, but though celebrated at every turn, it is a Self that is not self-sufficient or strong, it's a Self that is dependent on their status symbols and image management to come to full fruition. Adorno refers to this I, this debased self, as the "internal agent of repression." He also holds that the products of mainstream culture are shallower and more standardized than any of the actual people participating in the culture. That is, most of this art is beneath everyone. Adorno says that any given artwork is on some level alien to itself, that there are aspects of the Novel for example that are contrary to the idea of the free artistic volition of the creator. He goes on to say that this "element of self-alieness" within an artwork is what is meant by the word genius as the word is understood in its pure form. This is genius not as a celebration of the creative subject, which Adorno was suspicious of, as he sees the emphasis placed on the creator behind the work as being a kind of PR mask used by those who want to sell the work (this is akin to Benjamin's critique of Hollywood way back in the 40s: that it's in the best interest of Hollywood that the focus be on the persona of the actors and not on the quality of the product). I think Adorno is saying that the objective work is no longer the author's, or that it was never "owned" by the author in the first place. The pure concept of genius, according to Adorno, attempts to fuse the free individual with the grand authenticity of art. A true act of genius is out of the genius's hands; the author is irrelevant once the work is accomplished, since the author's genius has been dissolved into the work. He then goes on to state that the word genius came into vogue in the late eighteenth century, and that at that time it had little to do with glorifying the artist. "Any individual could become a genius to the extent that he expressed himself unconventionally as nature. Genius was an attitude to reality, 'ingenious doings,' indeed almost a conviction or frame of mind." And finally, what good would a real theorist be if he didn't take swipes at the bourgeoisie. Maybe you've wondered why music on the radio is so bad, why terrible movies repeatedly make so much money, etc. Adorno has an answer: "The bourgeois character tends to cling to what is inferior." Art = "Art brings to light what is infantile in the ideal of being grown up." "Art today is scarcely conceivable except as a form of reaction that anticipates the apocalypse." "Artworks fall hopelessly mute before the question 'What's it for?' and before the reproach that they are actually pointless." "Art, however, does not sink to the level of ideology...." "Artworks exercise a practical effect, if they do so at all, not by haranguing but by the scarcely apprehensible transformation of consciousness.... Artworks correspond to the objective need for a transformation of consciousness that could become a transformation of reality." "Life would be possible without art, too.... In a society that has disaccustomed men and women from thinking beyond themselves, whatever surpasses the mere reproduction of their life and those things they have been drilled to believe they cannot get along without, is superfluous." "The perpetuation of existing society is incompatible with consciousness of itself, and art is punished for every trace of such consciousness. From this perspective as well, ideology'-false consciousness'-is socially necessary." "For art, 'good enough' is never good enough." "Art is the ever-broken promise of happiness."

Review # 2 was written on 2008-03-14 00:00:00 Tom Soule Dense dense dense. Ever want to spend a little too much time reading one sentence then realize it has been three months? Worth the read for what is going on, but prepare yourself. You are not prepared.