Abstract
Adorno staunchly supports modernist art. From the concept of "art autonomy," he criticizes the avant-garde's artistic ideas, which centers on the concept of "spontaneity." As he argues, the so-called "spontaneous ideas" and "immediate consciousness" are the "reified consciousnesses" which are constantly unexamined. Avant-garde's skills of creating art works, including "autonomous writing," "collage" and "montage," not only put the autonomous arts in danger, but also harm art itself. The artistic form of avant-garde is inorganic, which hampers itself to engage in reality and the critique of the capitalist system. Moreover, this situation would also be contaminated by the "cultural industry" insomuch as its tattered form, and degenerate into the capitalist system. Accordingly, Adorno argues that the truly excellent art works should be those that are self-constructed based on the "art logic." Art works of this sort are crystalized by rationality. On the one hand, art logic absorbs the rational aspect of deductive logic; on the other hand, it also criticizes deductive logic's repressive form ("instrumental rationality" in other words). However, Adorno's action of borrowing art-rationality is intentionally misread by Habermas and Wellmer. For them, Adorno's aestheticism actually puts aesthetic above rationality, and tries to solve the problems caused by social modernity through art. Nevertheless, this aestheticism is exactly what Adorno opposes.
First Page
55
Last Page
69
Recommended Citation
Chang, Peijie. 2017. "Adorno's Critique of "Spontaneity" of the Avant-garde Art." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 37, (4): pp.55-69. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol37/iss4/3
