Riddle·Salvation·Utopia—On Adorno's Artistic Concept

Theodore Adorno,one of the representatives of Western Marxism,devoted his entire life to studying the relationship between society and art,whose artistic accomplishments(especially in the field of music)also made him the theorist and thinker with the highest level of art in the history of philosophy.Therefore,Adorno has his own original and special perception of artistic concepts.According to Adorno,art as the result of social production has dual attributes of self-discipline and sociality:art is neither an independent existence that is completely irrelevant to the outside world,nor is it a vassal that is solely dominated and determined by society.Art and society are independent of each other,and influence each other at the same time.Duel to its independence,art is a heterogeneous “Enigma”-like existence for society,and the role and value of art to society lie in indirect criticism and exposure.However,with the continuous development of modern society,Adorno believes that the legitimacy of art has faced a huge crisis:On the one hand,art has lost the truth and its own certainty,and we have gradually lost the ability to discern the differences between art and non-art;on the other hand,in the actual operation of society,art is gradually marketized and industrialized because it is subject to the logic of “identity”dominated by capital.Art began to be reduced to the product of “cultural industry” as Adorno described,unconsciously serving as a safeguard.In such a situation,art has to face a dilemma: art is either marginalized by society for choosing its independence;or it is reduced to a thorough commodity for choosing to compromise with the industrialized social tendencies.In the view of Adorno,this is not only a crisis of art,but also of modern society as a whole.The encounter of art is also the encounter of people living in modern society.Therefore,Adorno tries to establish an aesthetic utopia as the future direction of art,by reconstructing the “Enigma of truth” as the essential feature of art,to complete the redemption of modern society in the form of self-redemption.