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But in Adorno, as in Loos, things are never that simple, in the first
instance because of the formers propensity to read Hegel against the
grain: no teleology of any kind is available to the negative dialectician
who takes his critical task seriously, which, among other things,
presupposes the rejection of all closed systems. A crucial aspect of this
task is to expose the ideological deceptions and false alternatives
traditionally used to buttress the aesthetic domain--in short, to probe the
shaky foundations on which the house of culture is built. Combining, in
dialectical fashion, sociological considerations and an immanent
aesthetic standpoint, Adorno, in the Aesthetic Theory, was the first to
recognize that a basic presupposition of the aesthetic system constructed
by Hegel, the idea of an ever closer approximation to metaphysical truth
effected by artistic progress as art is sublated into philosophy--the
famous Hegelian death of artbecomes questionable, and even
absurd, at a moment, such as our own, when modern art enters a
historical phase in which it is obliged to face the consequences of
universal regression.
In Minima Moralia the idea of political and social progress fares no
better: in that text the march of the Hegelian World Spirit is derisively
contrasted to the Echternachtertanz, a folkdance in the village of
Echternach in Luxemburg in which the dancers move one step forward,
then two steps back. As this example suggests, whatever remains truly
progressive in the idea of progress is always open to radical qualification
for Adorno, whose reputation for cultural pessimism is well-deserved.
Yet it is also true that this dimension of his thought sets the stage,
dialectically speaking, for the simultaneous unfolding of a politics and
theory of hope (or rather hope against hope). From this perspective
real progress would involve humanity coming to know itself and its
actual circumstances. In his lectures of 1964-65 titled History and
Freedom Adorno makes the following paradoxical observation:
progress means escaping from the magic spell, including the spell of
progress that is itself nature. This happens when human beings become
the formal and erotic impulses of bygone eras, should not be totally
repudiated. Here it is not so much a question of seeing Loos as that most
paradoxical of men, the radical conservative or intellectual splitpersonality, but of recognizing something more historically attuned in
his critical attitude: an insight into the internal contradictions of AustroHungarian culture. In this regard Loos did not only understand that
ornament is subject to variable historical rhythms, but also maintained
that to fall out of step with these rhythms can have a deleterious effect.
Given the rootlessness of the inhabitant of the modern metropolis, in
Loos view it would be intellectually dishonest as well as economically
wasteful to pursue a program of ornamentation in the city. This, among
other reasons, is why Looss critique hit its mark: in the twentiethcentury Grosstadt technical efficiency, the social consequences of
industrialization and the functional optimization effected by the removal
of ornament reflect a conception of culture that is more modern than the
prevalent one in Austria at the time, in which the self-conscious artiness
of the Sezession and Wiener Werkstatte was the dominant feature.
Along with Alois Riegl (Stilfragen, 1893) and other protagonists of the
Vienna School of art history, Loos was among the first to recognize that
the differentiated temporality of ornament complements its ordering
of space and its rhythmic articulation of architectural form. This
temporality is at once experiential and historical. It is no accident that
Loos compared a jaunt in the Austrian countryside to a journey back in
time to the great ethnic displacements that marked the end of the
Roman Empire, which may be an implicit citation of another book of
Riegls, Sptrmisches Kunstindustrie (1901), published seven years
before Ornament and Crime. Yet this aperu, whose wit is only matched by
its profundity, is also inscribed in the same general context as the ironic
citations of Darwin and Haeckel that Loos used to associate the
newborns sensorium first with that of a puppy, then with that of an ape,
and finally with that of a budding Voltaire who presumably is more
culturally advanced than the protagonists of the Sezession. Pursuing the
Adorno situates historically between these two figures, and this gives his
discourse a specific critical role and function that allows it to move
beyond Ruskin and William Morris, critics whose insights he clearly
drew upon.
A significant turning point in Adornos analysis of the relationship of
ornament and function can be seen in the historical transformation of
ornament that took place in the period from Ruskin to Loos. This period
is pivotal for the emergence of a modern aesthetic insofar as it was then
that a revolt occurred, already found in Sempers critique of the Great
Exhibition in London of 1851, attacking mass-produced articles of use.
All of these items werepseudo-individualized, as Adorno puts it,
referring to the universe of kitsch objects as a parody, conscious or not,
of the universe of genuinely individualized craft objects it supplanted.
Yet as Adorno points out, even Loos noted the inadequacy on the purely
aesthetic level of any return to craft inspired by such vague conceptions
as Kunstwollen, will to form, Gestaltung or Stilisierung propounded in
such diverse cultural arenas as the Vienna School of Art History, the
Werkbund, and the Arts and Crafts Movement.
While agreeing in a general way with Looss critique of mass
production, Adorno singles out a specific argument that develops one of
Looss most profound insights into the modern dialectic of ornament
and function. Loos realized that utilitarian objects lose their meaning
once they are disengaged from contexts in which their adherence to
established functional codes was obligatory. In other words, the point at
which useful objects are no longer useful is when their historically
conditioned function expires. At this point they are no longer beautiful
either. In this respect the super-added, and therefore highly artificial art
of practical objects becomes a source of the pervasive ugliness of massproduced objects. The ugliness in question is only compounded by the
fact that even the practical reorientation of the originally functionless art
of the same era is driven into the clutches of the profit-motive. Contrary
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to this tendency, and endorsing a course of action that was at least partly
inspired by Ruskin, Loos called for a renewal of genuine craft
production. This renewal would be integrated within the universe of
modern technical development without having to borrow stylized forms
in a word, obsolete forms of ornament--from art.
Aesthetic Identity, Abstraction, and Mimesis
It is with reference to the opposition of ornament and function that
Adornos account of the historical logic of ornament in Functionalism
Today intersects the theory of ornament put forward in the Aesthetic
Theory. In both texts, there is a recognition that the moment one
succumbs to the restorative ideal, one fallseven in a mind as vigilant
and critical as Loossinto a nostalgia for the superior aesthetic quality
of the ostensibly nonaestheticized, purely functional object. In this sense
the claims that Loos advanced for a functional aesthetic suffered,
according to Adorno, from too simple an antithesis.
Indeed, when dealing with these claims a wider problematic is involved
which falls under the rubric of what Adorno called the obsolescence
of traditional aesthetics. In his view, it is owing to the radical
transformation of aesthetic categories that is a hallmark of modernity--a
general shift that affected not only the traditional dichotomy of
ornament vs. function but also the allied oppositions of form vs. content,
beauty vs. ugliness and completeness vs. fragmentation--that an
unprecedented conception of aesthetic construction arose that makes
Loos opposition between functional and ornamental seem undialectical.
This conception presupposes the assertion of a critical role for art in
modern society. The argument Adorno puts forward for this role--one of
the principal themes of the Aesthetic Theory-- is based on the inner
dialectic of social reality and aesthetic identity. The latter refers to the
integrity of the modern art work, which Adorno contrasts to subjective
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criminal activity.
One plausible answer lies in Looss specific critical purpose: to reveal the
underlying assumptions of ornament as a universal cultural
phenomenon, modulated in its various manifestations according to
diverse historical circumstances. At the same time, for Loos, it is
necessary to recognize that the domains of ornament and crime are not
totally distinct. He seems to have realized that the strange sensation of
horror vacui is, in the case of ornament, that which abhors ambivalence.
One might even say that the power of ornament is caught up at some
level with the attempt to ward off danger, and therefore constitutes a
kind of apotropaic activity. Ornament and crime would thus be linked
for Loos not only by the pleasure principle, as Adorno asserts, but by an
archaic fear of the unknown.
Loos was aware of this aspect of ornament in connection with the idea of
the mask and its inherent relation to cladding, even if it gets somewhat
obscured by his interest in the erotic associations of ornamenting the
body as well as the surfaces of the world in general. Adorno observed, in
what is probably his most incisive critique of Loos position, that that
art aspires to autonomy does not mean that it unconditionally purges
itself of ornamental elements: the very existence of art, judged by the
criteria of the practical, is ornamental. Apotropaic, magical, practices,
as strange as this may seem to modern ears, were in fact eminently
practical in many so-called primitive societies: in this regard what Loos
condemns as impractical excess actually had, at the origins of
ornamental formalization, a specific purpose, which Adorno calls
psychological in that they fused symbolic, mimetic/expressive, as well
as specifically utilitarian purposes.
Art, in fact, is the heir of such cultic practices. In light of this observation
Adornos critique acquires a new significance which is summed up in an
insight that stands at its heart: If Loos critique of ornament had been
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For Adorno, it is likely that modern art will continue to unfold as long as
the world is broken and irreconcilable: it would seem, indeed, to have
quite a long lease on life under these circumstances. Philosophy, too,
lives on since the chance to realize it was missed. And since modern art
is often not only imageless in its abstraction, even when it comes closest
to conceptual elaboration it is still quite far from being assimilated into
the philosophical domain as this is traditionally conceived. Similarly,
where some of the greatest art in the modern era is marked by nonconceptual abstraction, which acts as a reminder of the misplaced
concreteness of contemporary social relations, at the same historical
juncture modern architecture is condemned to await, even as it
prefigures, a more ethical humanity which does not yet exist. Or, as
Adorno puts it in an unforgettable phrase that captures much of the
pathos of modern architecture in general and of Looss contribution in
particular: Architecture worthy of human beings thinks better of men
than they actually are.
The pathos of this thought is linked to a specific tension within modern
culture. To be more precise, Adorno, citing the historical dynamic of
functionalization inaugurated by Looss attack on ornament, argued that
the fact that such diverse protagonists of modern architecture as Le
Corbusier and Scharoun were unable to build more of their radical ideas
stems from an antagonism inherent in modern architecture. This is a
social antagonism over which the greatest architecture has no power: the
same society which developed human productive energes to
unimaginable proportions has chained them to conditions of production
imposed upon them: thus the people in in reality constitute the
productive energies become deformed according to the measure of their
working conditions. This fundamental contradiction is most clearly
visible in architecture. It is just as difficult for architecture to rid itself of
the tensions from which this contradiction proceeds as it for the
consumer.
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Adorno purues this line of argument further by adding that things are
not universally correct in architecture and universally incorrect in men.
Men suffer enough injustice, for their consciousness and
unconsciousness are trapped in a state of minority: they have not, so to
speak, come of age. This nonage hinders their identification with their
own concerns. Because architecture is in fact both autonomous and
purpose-oriented it cannot simply negate men as they are. And yet it
must do precisely that it if it is to remain autonomous . The idea that
an architecture worthy of humanity exists, and in so doing prefigures
that very humanity whose horizon it evokes but cannot realize, lends
Adornos reading its theoretical specificity. It enables it to match, and in
some cases to supersede, many of Loos most penetrating observations
on ornament. One might even say that Loos helped Adorno reach a
critical point situated beyond the intellectual coordinates of Looss
polemic both in theoretical and historical terms.
Adorno, Loos, and Viennese Modernism
As is the case with seminal texts, Looss critique of ornament stands at
the intersection of a great number of readings, both potential and actual.
Adornos is among the most significant, despite its total disgregard of
the impact of Loos theory on his practice. To clarify the implications of
this reception one must take into account the incidence of stronger and
weaker readings able to bring out latent potentials within a corpus of
thought or a given conceptual ensemble. When it came into contact with
Adornos relentless critical gaze, Loos critique of ornament disclosed
unexpected theoretical dimensions, clarifying areas of implication and
cultural forms that Loos himself never had the opportunity of
inclination to explore.
To be more specific, Adorno, taking Loos as a point of reference, moved
in the direction of an austere aesthetic that was disposed to shun
ornament from the outset, preferring Schoenberg to Stravinsky, to
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have taken the form that it did, without his theoretical assimilation of
Looss nuanced polemic against the fin-de-siecle culture of ornament.
This was a critique which, as Adorno was acutely aware, played a
decisive role in the emergence of modern architecture.
Yet Loos had a proleptic as well as a historical significance for Adorno.
This is the case insofar as modern architecture, traversed by a highly
differentiated set of utopian and/or reformist impulses, delineates, for
Adorno, along with many other modernists who staked their theory and
practice on the future, a society worthy of the architecture that
prefigures it. In this respect Adornos reading of Loos joins forces with a
theoretical parallel action linking his inquiry back to one of the main
sources of Benjamins Rettende Kritik: the confrontation with Karl Kraus,
who incessantly probed the flaws of the present in the hope that they
would disappear in such a way that the negative contours they left
behind would set the stage for the society to come. From the redemptive
point of view offered by this confrontation, the respective messages of
Kraus, Loos, Benjamin and Adorno form a unique constellation.
Although this constellation cannot be said to align their different critical
standpoints with an aesthetic purged entirely of ornament, it does
indicate a historical horizon in which such an outcome is conceivable,
without compromising the specificity of their contributions to the
modern debate on the relationship between architecture and culture.
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