Given Adorno’s predilection for high art—Beckett, Poe, Kafka, Mahler, and Schoenberg were among his preferred artists—it may seem a stretch to locate “shudder” on the internet. Yet, the resulting antithesis of both spheres, can be reconciled by “absorbing light art into serious or vice versa” (Adorno and Horkheimer 1944), … ... Adorno/Horkheimer made distinctions between high and low culture and pointed out that ideology acts as the basis of all media culture. Light art, in the form of entertainment, “accompanied autonomous art as its shadow” (Adorno and Horkheimer 1944).
Here is what looks to be a good survey paper I just found: John A. Fisher's High Art Versus Low Art.. First, it looks like some theorists don't accept a descriptive high art/low art distinction which picks out something in the art object itself (e.g.
become so successful that “art” and “life” are no longer wholly separable – which is the theme later theorists of postmodernity took from the essay. In a letter to fellow philosopher Walter Benjamin, he referred to high and low culture as two ‘torn halves of an integral freedom, to which, however, they do not add up’. Sometimes it is merely entertaining (The Big Lebowski); mildly prophetic (Blade Runner); morally provocative---or, evocative (The Last Temptation); or, politically scathing (The Majestic---Jim Carrey was the quintessential accidental hero in that one and all of us who were growing up during the Joe McCarthy debacle rooted for him like there was no tomorrow). works of art are ascetic and unashamed; the CI is pornographic and prudish “Diner must be satisfied with reading the menu” Purposelessness of autonomous art is its redemption CI reconciles high and low art and ruins them both “Adorno’s primary concern was not with the future of art but Adorno is here beginning with the dichotomy of light music and serious music —the popular music, be it from “the song-book,” the commercial versus rigorous/art-music/academic music, an example of the low versus high art distinction. Theodor W. Adorno was one of the most important philosophers and social critics in Germany after World War II. Adorno’s attack on the culture industry turns out, in the end, not to be an attack on pleasure, but an attack in the name of pleasure.
CI does not sublimate, it represses. Of course “high” art still exists as “mass culture”’s opposite, but for Adorno, in a famous phrase, these are two Unique Contemporary Wall Decoration created by carefully curated designers. Partisans who want to argue the point advocate for the high or low art, not about whether or not what Adorno saw as the fatal breach in two modes of musical listening and creating could be repaired. (See Jameson 1990; and the Lyotard essay in this volume.) Essay Hoggart and Adorno a Comparison of Ideas and 90,000+ more term papers written by professionals and your peers. Although less well known among anglophone philosophers than his contemporary Hans-Georg Gadamer, Adorno had even greater influence on scholars and intellectuals in postwar Germany.
No, it is not really catastrophic. -High quality-Individual artistic expression-Took effort and struggle to make-Took skill and intelligence to make-Challenging to appreciate-Requires an understanding of the techniques to 'get'-Refers to the historical traditions of that art form-Encourages thought and discussion-Confronts social and philosophical problems