[FRA:] Adorno's aesthetics: the ugly (2)

[Ralph Dumain]

Aesthetic Violence: The Concept of the Ugly in Adorno's "Aesthetic Theory"
Peter Uwe Hohendahl
Source: Cultural Critique, No. 60 (Spring, 2005), pp. 170-196.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/4489213

"The radical formal experiment, which makes visible the cruel, repeats the moment of cruelty in myth, but it does not stop there. At the same time, Adorno suggests, the cruel contains a moment of critical self-reflection. Art "despairs over the claim to power that it fulfills in being reconciled" (Aesthetic Theory, 50).26 While the representation of the ugly in the artwork as a form of
social criticism is an important point in Adorno's inquiry; it by no means exhausts the significance of the ugly. Adorno's brief discussion of the cruel points to another, deeper level of his argument, namely the banished but ultimately not overcome power of myth in the modern world. This is the place where the central theme of Dialectic
of Enlightenment merges with the analysis of the origin of art in Aesthetic Theory. Adorno's resistance to the idea of formal reconciliation in German classicism, insofar as it denies or minimizes human suffering, leads him to the archaic and primitive where the aesthetic reconciliation has not yet occurred. Although he strongly emphasizes,
as we have seen, the "Sprung" between magic practices and art, he equally stresses the importance of the mythic ground. This, however, means that the ugly is prior to the beautiful: "If one originated in the other, it is beauty that originated in the ugly, and not the reverse"
(Aesthetic Theory, 50).27 This seemingly formal shift (the beautiful becomes the negation of the ugly) opens up a dimension of art that traditional aesthetic theory could not accommodate within its system."

The author eventually comes to this:

"The rigorous defense of the autonomy of art, a central theme of Aesthetic Theory, finds its limit in the concept of the ugly, which is a label for the primitive and archaic. Although the ugly is grounded in the archaic, i.e. in the sphere of nonfreedom, it also articulates the
force of life against the death of the aesthetic form."

Not surprisingly,what Adorno is ultimately committed to here is not clear.  Further down:

"The dialectic of progress and regression resurfaces in Aesthetic Theory as the dialectic of the modern and the archaic. For this reason, the difference between magical practices and early art is of great importance for Adorno. This means that behind the question of the ugly lies the larger issue of the primitive and its meaning in modern, enlightened society."

>From here we delve into Freud and Nietzsche. There is much overlap between Freud and Adorno, but there are differences in their analysis of archaic aesthetics & magic and their respective roles in modern consciousness, and Adorno no longer exhibits that adherence to Enlightenment progress that Freud, his pessimism notwithstanding, upholds. There are greater affinities to Nietzsche, but Adorno diverges sharply from Nietzsche's call for the rebirth of myth. Adorno is opposed to mythical reconciliation. The triangle of Nietschze, Wagner, and Adorno is examined at this point.

In DIALECTIC OF ENLIGHTENMENT there is no celebration of the Dionysian. 

"Theory. The stronger recognition of the ugly as a defining element of both archaic and modern art is not related to Nietzsche's Dionysian primitivism; rather, it draws attention to the critical function of the work of art. While the early artworks struggle to reveal their distinct
aesthetic character against the realm of the magic, the modern work demonstrates its critical opposition to classical reconciliation by way of its refusal of the harmony of beauty. Whereas the later Nietzsche wavers between the celebration of classicism (Mozart) and the acknowledgment of decadent European modernism (Wagner), Adorno tends to equate classicism with false aesthetic solutions. In Aesthetic Theory he acknowledges the archaic and primitive as a crucial element of early art, but the perspective is the opposite of that of the early Nietzsche. Adorno focuses attention on the difference between art and magic. In short, he underscores the process of civilization, in which art partakes while it resists the notion of a rational evolution (science). Artworks need the moment of "Verzauberung" that science must resolutely refuse."