Why did Adorno criticize popular art as a commodity of capitalist society?

Adorno believed that popular art had become a mere commodity in capitalist society, standardizing individual identity and concealing the contradictions of society. He argued that art should be autonomous and non-conformist as a tool of social criticism and resistance, and presented avant-garde art as a desirable form of art.

 

Adorno pointed out that mass art produced by the culture industry has not only lost its essence by becoming a commodity for profit maximization, but also conceals the contradictions and absurdities of contemporary society. In Adorno’s view, popular art is nothing more than a commodity that is standardized from composition to expression. He believes that the standardization of popular art leads to the standardization of individual appreciation, and individuality becomes indistinguishable from that of other individuals. Especially in a capitalist society that tries to reduce everything to the exchange value of commodities, popular art acts as a mechanism to reduce even individual identity to a commodity.
Adorno’s criticism of the inherent limitations of popular art leads to a deep reflection on contemporary art. He believed that when art loses its ability to reflect and criticize social reality, it also loses its own meaning. Adorno argues that popular art has become a tool not just for recreational consumption, but for dominating people’s thoughts and feelings and paralyzing social critical consciousness. This is an important point that forces us to rethink the role and value of art in modern society.
Adorno defines homogeneity as the property of unifying different value systems into a single value system and dissimilarity as the property of refusing to be reduced to a single value system, and he argues that art should have a dissimilarity that refuses to be reduced. That is why art should refuse to be the beautiful commodity that the public wants, and should be ugly and unpleasant for its own sake. For him, art should allow the viewer to experience the essence of the world as the artist sees it. Art should be a medium for experiencing the absurdity of modern society by appearing as a formless, unstructured form that refuses to be identified.
Adorno appreciates that avant-garde art, such as Schoenberg’s music, resists identification in its own right, but does not directly express resistance or enlightenment. This is because he sees inherent in any direct expression of resistance or enlightenment a violent intention to homogenize the non-identical. Just as Schoenberg’s music, full of dissonance, offended his listeners, art must resist the violence of homogenization by making them experience the inhomogeneity it reveals.
For Adorno, art is a social product, and so aesthetics exists to read the painful state of society precipitated in the work. He proposed avant-garde art, in which non-identity itself is an attribute, as a desirable form of art to strive for. He emphasized the autonomy and non-identity of art, wary of reducing it to a commodity that satisfies the desires of the masses. This perspective reflects his philosophical belief that art should function as a tool of social criticism and resistance, not simply provide aesthetic pleasure.
Adorno’s aesthetics is positive in that he sought the autonomy of art through the relationship between art and society. This is because he believes that art should be both social and detached from society to confront the nature of society. His aesthetic provides a critical perspective on existing art. For example, if we read Cézanne’s painting of an apple through the lens of Adorno’s aesthetics, we would see it as a representation of the nature of society and a “beautiful fiction” from which the artist is vantage point.
However, Cézanne’s painting could be a mimesis, a representation of the artist’s subjective impressions in colors and geometric shapes such as red and gray. Mimesis is the reproduction of the subject’s view of the world, or in other words, the realization of the sensible from the insensible. In other words, Cézanne’s work is not a specific apple, but a representation of the world as captured by the artist’s gaze: the life force of nature, the life of the farmer, and the artist’s thoughts as he contemplates it.
Adorno believes that art should make the viewer experience the essence of the world as captured by the artist, but by limiting this aesthetic experience to the absurdities of contemporary society, he limits true art to the experience of the atypicality of form itself as a sensory object. In other words, Adorno’s aesthetics denies the mimesis of subjective representation.
Adorno’s aesthetics, on the other hand, shrinks the realm of art to an extreme degree: although he himself criticizes the violence of identification, he attempts to identify art in terms of avant-garde art, claiming that only the avant-garde art he pursues is true art. In particular, this deprives us of the opportunity to discover the value of various arts in reality. Aesthetic value can be found in art that is not avant-garde, as Benjamin points out that it is possible to discover a new artistic spirit even in a photograph that was taken by mistake and lacks any subjectivity of the artist. In addition, even popular art, which is subservient to the logic of capital, can perform a critical function for society, just as popular music can convey a message of social resistance.
In conclusion, Adorno’s theory of art offers an important critical perspective on contemporary art and the cultural industry, but it can also be criticized for being overly restrictive. While recognizing the diversity and pluralism of art, and considering that many forms of art can serve as social critique and resistance, Adorno’s theory may not fully reflect the complexity and multi-layered nature of contemporary art. Therefore, when discussing the nature and function of art, it is necessary to draw on Adorno’s critical perspective, but also to explore a variety of artistic expressions and their possibilities.