The Challenges Of Being An Artist In A Civilization Looking For Truth

By

II.

Adorno is very interested in society and how they perceive works of art. Though he writes heavily about how society is striving to embody Enlightenment and reject myth and its deceptions, how does Adorno see reality in relation to art? Does art present reality? Spectators crave art that represents truth and reality; they fight to uncover the absolute truth within a visual. The problem with only searching for truth in a work of art is that, according to Adorno and Horkheimer, art does not claim to be true or absolute; art does not intentionally make any sort of statement regarding the real or authentic or genuine, but it expresses what the artist intended. If a work of art displays something that its viewers do not find familiar, many times, those viewers reject it because they cannot relate. In a world where society determines the life or death of art based on their own interests, a work, which seemingly may not speak what spectators are interested in conversing, gets rejected because many viewers perceive the work as deceptive and false; additionally, a work of art that misleads and lures its spectators away from their desired Enlightened path gets rejected and removed from society as well.

Let’s put this into exaggerated terms on the spectrum of Enlightenment versus myth. If Enlightenment embodies all that is true, real and genuine (on one end of the spectrum), and myth correlates to nature, the imaginary and untruths (on the other end), then a work of art is seen most commonly as a form of myth. If myth is rejected by a knowledge hungry society, then art is rejected with it. However, Adorno and Horkheimer write that in order to grasp Enlightenment, society needs to fully comprehend myth in order to make that distinction; one must understand all that is false and untrue in order to fully comprehend what is real and true. With this in mind, is it possible for spectators to understand the true and false components of a work of art as it may relate to the world outside of its self?

Aside from being able to distinguish the true and false elements of a work of art, how are spectators expected to interpret whether or not something is an imitation of the real or the real thing itself? This is an ongoing problem with modern and contemporary art because reality has become abstracted; art that formerly presented the real in a familiar way is now conceptual and mysterious, and therefore, challenging to decipher. For Danto, the only way spectators are able to know that something is art is because it is framed, staged, quoted, exhibited in an art space, performed, created by a famously known artist, etcetera. This means that regardless of any notion of the real or unreal, art has already been considered to be art by society as long as it falls under the above listed circumstances. For Danto, once a work has been deemed art, it is observed to be a mirror of reality, which means that art is a representation of the real and not the authentic thing itself (as in Paleolithic times, for example). He notes that society gets lost in trying to conceive of a work both as art and as something which presents reality (imitation).

For Hal Foster, in focusing on how society perceives of a work of art, he discusses the gaze in regards to contemporary art. He writes, “it is as if this art wanted the gaze to shine, the object to stand, the real to exist, in all the glory (or the horror) of its pulsatile design, or at least to evoke this sublime condition”(140). It is as if contemporary art is trying to exist beyond itself and truly exhibit the real in order for viewers to unite the real with the imaginary, or in Adorno and Horkheimer’s terms, to unite Enlightenment with myth. How do all of these elements relate back to reality’s relation to art? According to these authors, does art present reality? I will answer this question with my own analysis and understanding of these writings and theories.

Work Cited:

  • Adorno, Theodor W., Gretel Adorno, and Rolf Tiedemann. “Theories on the Origin of Art.”
    Aesthetic Theory. Trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 1997. 325-31.
  • Danto, Arthur C. “Works of Art and Mere Real Things.” The Transfiguration of the
    Commonplace: A Philosophy of Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1981.
  • Duchamp, Marcel. “The Creative Act.” Salt Seller; the Writings of Marcel Duchamp.
    New York: Oxford UP, 1973.
  • Foster, Hal. “The Return of the Real.” The Return of the Real: The Avant-garde at the End of the
    Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1996.
  • Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. “The Concept of Enlightenment.” The Dialectic of
    Enlightenment. New York: Herder and Herder, 1972.