Adorno and Art ─ Aesthetic Theory Contra Critical Theory

If the advancement toward the administered world is nearing completion, if spectacularised societies, industrialised cultures, and reified consciousness have taken control, then, Adorno and Art shows how radical and revolutionary Adorno's aesthetic theory of art's double character remains, and how complex, imaginative and oppositional, forms of art offer, perhaps, the best hope for overcoming damaged life. The caricatures of Adorno, his politics and his aesthetics, are well known errors of judgement - widely repeated both by the academy and by the Left. Adorno's aesthetics has been accused of failing to keep pace with progressive artistic practices and for being socio-politically aloof. Despite the persistence of these caricatures, this book shows how significant images and themes in Adorno's theory remain relevant to the current situation of art, aesthetics and politics. The Adorno on show in this volume was no bourgeois mandarin, no arrogant aesthete, no esoteric mystic, no melancholy pessimist, and no academic expert holed up in the proverbial ivory tower.

James Hellings is Senior Lecturer in Fine Art (Theory and Context) at the School of Art, Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, Birmingham City University, UK. He researches, writes and lectures about modern and contemporary art and the thought that accompanies it. Originally educated as an artist, James worked in the Department of Prints and Drawings at The British Museum, before receiving full AHRC Scholarships for both his MA and PhD studies in contemporary art theory at Goldsmiths College, University of London.