'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'
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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'
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Adorno: Art and irrationality
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February 20, 2007
I want to return to Amresh Sinha's Adorno on Mimesis in Aesthetic Theory that I posted on here about art's dilemma of regression to magic and surrender of the mimetic impulse to thinglike rationality.
Referring to the task of critique in Adorno's doctrine of mimesis Sinha says:
Art is without doubt irrational, or at least, its origin cannot be extricated from the horror that always distinguishes it from the other, but it is also, at the same time, rational, to the extent that it must not deteriorate to the superstitious mythological level...Art is critical of rationality, yet cannot be identified with it, despite the fact that rationality, too, is a critical factor...Rationality is immanent to art, and this rationality is in many ways similar to the rationality of the outside world, but it is also, at the same time, different from the rationality of the conceptual order. No artistic work can exist in complete isolation from the "rationality governing the world outside," yet it may not reproduce or imitate the strictures of the governing logic that condemns it for having irrational features. What appears as irrational expression in art in the "eyes" of the conceptual ordering is actually the expression of the "forgotten experiences" that themselves cannot be understood by "rationalizing them."
Adorno's defense of irrationalism is prompted by a desire to defend expressionism and surrealism from the attacks of the anti-modernist critics. In Aesthetic Theory Adorno says:
To accuse art of irrationalism because it succeeds in getting out from under instrumental reason is to be ideological ...currents like expressionism and surrealism, the irrationality of which was highly disturbing to some, acted up against repression, authority and obscurantism.... "to manifest irrationality--the irrationality of the psyche and of the objective order--in art through a formative process, thus making it rational in a sense, is one thing: to preach irrationality, which more often than not goes hand in hand with a superficial rationalism in the use of artistic means, is quite another"(p.82)
I struggle to understand expressionism as an irrationality. This seems to imply that the emotions are irrational rather than modes of knowing.
My understanding is that surrealism marks the undermining of the individual bourgeois subject ----the autonomous or fixed and self-evident subject of modernity as articulated by liberal philosophers such as John Locke and John Stuart Mill. The undermining was part of the long history of decentralisation and destabilisation of the liberal subject, and it took the form of the Freudianenunciation of the unconscious binding the subject to its seemingly 'orginary' desires.
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Gary,A quote from my favourite "philosopher".
"The living body-mind inherently wants to realize the matrix of life, wants to allow the light into the "room". Making it possible for human beings to fulfill that impulse is what I work to do. My images are created to be a means of participating in reality as fundamental light---the world as light, relationship as light, conditional light as absolute light".
By the way He has been officially accepted as a Collateral Artist at this years Venice Biennale. This is highly unusual for an artist that nobody has ever heard of. Some people would seem to value and even understand the uniqueness of His Art.