07Hohendahl.

qxd 7/14/2005 10:27 AM Page 170

AESTHETIC VIOLENCE: THE CONCEPT OF THE

UGLY IN ADORNO’S AESTHETIC THEORY
Peter Uwe Hohendahl

Although Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory explicitly emphasizes the

importance of the ugly in art, the critical response has been mod-
est.1 Since the concept of the beautiful is given a central place in
Adorno’s theory, commentators have focused their attention on the
link between classical aesthetic theory and the theory of the mod-
ern artwork, which stands at the center of Adorno’s endeavor.2 In
this account, the important issue is Adorno’s attempt to reconnect
the theory of modern art with Kant’s and Hegel’s reXections on art.3
This line of argument is, of course, supported by Adorno’s exten-
sive treatment of the “Naturschöne,” which nineteenth-century aes-
thetic theory, in the wake of Hegel, had eliminated from its agenda.
From this perspective, Adorno’s treatment of the ugly in art fades
into the background. Its signiWcance becomes limited to its opposi-
tional function in modern art. As important as this function is for
Adorno, it by no means exhausts the meaning of the ugly. Adorno’s
presentation of the material has possibly made it more difWcult to
recognize the larger meaning of the category for his theory, since
the section devoted to the ugly seems to be less worked out than
other parts of the posthumous work. I think it unlikely that the
author would have published the section in its present form, because
its various and heterogeneous elements have not been fully syn-
thesized. Differently put, the section’s dialectical nature has to be
reconstructed by looking at other parts of the text. As we will see,
the concept of the ugly functions on different levels, which connect
with different sections of Aesthetic Theory. The task of my essay will
be not only to separate the multiple strands of Adorno’s treatment

Cultural Critique 60—Spring 2005—Copyright 2005 Regents of the University of Minnesota

07Hohendahl.qxd 7/14/2005 10:27 AM Page 171

AESTHETIC VIOLENCE 171

of the ugly but also to consider the signiWcance of the whole com-
plex in Adorno’s thought. The fact that Adorno discusses the ugly
before he turns to the beautiful must be taken seriously—as an index
of the importance that he gave to the ugly.
The obvious level, especially in Aesthetic Theory, is the role
assigned to the ugly in German aesthetics, beginning with Schiller
and Friedrich von Schlegel and culminating in Karl Rosenkranz’s
Ästhetik des Häßlichen (1853), to which Adorno explicitly refers. In the
architecture of Aesthetic Theory this element plays an important role
insofar as it underscores a larger theme in Adorno’s thought that is
concerned with the connection between classical aesthetics with its
emphasis on the autonomy of the artwork and the theory of mod-
ernism and the avant-garde.4 In this context the category of the ugly
receives increasing attention during the course of the nineteenth cen-
tury but remains in a secondary position as the negative of the beau-
tiful. Yet it is precisely this order that Adorno means to challenge.
Within the academic tradition that he invokes, this is a difWcult task,
because nineteenth-century aesthetics resisted the foregrounding of
the ugly as a threat to the autonomy of art, and Adorno is not pre-
pared to relinquish aesthetic autonomy. He must argue therefore that
the ugly is compatible with the autonomy of art. For this purpose,
Adorno introduces a second line of argument, namely the relevance
of the ugly for modern art, and for the avant-garde in particular. In
the context of modernist aesthetics the reversal between the beautiful
and the ugly becomes necessary for a defense of the artwork against
the impact of the culture industry and its commercialization of the
beautiful. Adorno mentions “Jugendstil” as a primary example for
this process. The autonomy of the artwork depends on its opposi-
tional force, a quality that is enhanced by the ugly. It is precisely the
violation of the traditional aesthetic code that separates the advanced
artwork from the threat of the culture industry.
The two strands mentioned above, however, do not exhaust the
signiWcance of the ugly in Adorno’s thought. In fact, they do not get
to the root of Adorno’s interest in the ugly. The third, and I believe
most important, aspect is the link to the primitive and archaic. It is
this nexus that raises the most fundamental and far-reaching ques-
tions, questions about the origins of art, its relation to myth and reli-
gion, and its changing function in human history. The relevance of
07Hohendahl.qxd 7/14/2005 10:27 AM Page 172

172 PETER UWE HOHENDAHL

these questions is, of course, by no means limited to Aesthetic Theory;

rather, they also play an important role in The Philosophy of Modern
Music and Dialectic of Enlightenment. Thomas Mann’s Dr. Faustus, a
work for which the young Adorno served as a musical consultant,
would be another site for the examination of these fundamental prob-
lems, for Mann was especially interested in the connection between
the primitive and the avant-garde artwork.
In Aesthetic Theory Adorno introduces this complex conWguration
in various parts of the text, but most prominently in the section on
the ugly. What is more difWcult to recognize is the intrinsic connec-
tion with the other strands of the argument. In the text that Adorno
left us they appear as heterogeneous elements, each of them having
its own distinct function. Neither the connections nor the broader
context are worked out with the same rigor that we Wnd in other sec-
tions of Aesthetic Theory. For this reason our analysis has to examine
the elements as well as the not fully articulated whole.

While the section on the ugly in Aesthetic Theory opens with a refer-
ence to the German aesthetic tradition, thereby placing Adorno’s
treatment of the concept in the context of German idealism and its
philosophy of art, in Adorno’s work the problem of aesthetic violence
through the ugly goes back to the 1930s, especially to The Philosophy
of Modern Music.5 Adorno’s interpretation of Schoenberg and Stravin-
sky (in the second part, written later) discusses the ugly as a speciWc
element of post-Romantic music, a moment that characterizes the mod-
ernist artwork as a radical opposition to the conventions of romantic
music. The ugly appears Wrst and foremost as a formal moment, the
result of techniques that refuse the Wnal return from dissonance to
consonance. In the case of Schoenberg, there is no question about the
legitimacy of this radical move. As Adorno argues, the emancipation
of the dissonance in the work of Schoenberg follows the historical
logic of the material. Adorno speaks of the necessity of art with re-
spect to its immanent development: “Under the coercion of its own
objective consequences music has critically invalidated the idea of
the polished work and disrupted the collective continuity of its
effect.”6 Not only does the rejection of the traditional masterpiece de-
serve attention but also the loss of the collective grounding of art. This
loss isolates the advanced artwork as a radical subjective expression
07Hohendahl.qxd 7/14/2005 10:27 AM Page 173

AESTHETIC VIOLENCE 173

of the individual artist, a process that increases the distance between

advanced music and the general public. To the general public the
radical work that strictly follows the logic (Zwang) of the material
appears ugly. Yet for Adorno it is not the misapprehension of the
audience that brings about the foregrounding of the ugly; rather, it is
the work itself that violates traditional compositional solutions (Har-
monik) and its corresponding aesthetic values (the beautiful). Hence
Adorno can invoke “a prohibitive Canon” (Philosophy of Modern
Music, 34) (“Kanon des Verbotenen” [Gesammelte Schriften, 12:37]) as
the guiding principle for the modern artist, the refusal to return to
older solutions of technical problems. In this argument the opposi-
tion between the beautiful and the ugly receives new meaning. While
the idealist philosophy of art insisted on the priority of the beautiful
and treated the ugly as a negative second term, the transition to mod-
ern music unhinges this opposition from its conventional place and
reverses the priority. Together with the rounded artwork, the beauti-
ful as the aesthetic ideal has to be given up, since its preservation
would be false. For Adorno the notion of the correct (i.e. the histori-
cally appropriate technical solution) has replaced the appreciation of
the beautiful. Therefore in a note he stresses the contingency of spe-
ciWc accords, for example the “octave doublings” (Philosophy of Modern
Music, 35) (“Oktavverdopplungen”). They can be correct or incorrect
depending on the “state of material” (ibid.) (“Stand des Materials”).
The state of material must be the primary concern of the composer—
without regard to conventional aesthetic values.
The concept of the ugly becomes part of the discussion of mod-
ern music by way of the negation of the convention (style) and its
connection with the concept of the beautiful. Yet this process contains
more than the exhaustion of the beautiful; it raises the ugly as a new
aesthetic quality linked to the advanced technique that presses the
state of material. In this context the concept of the ugly has a purely
formal character based on the immanent analysis of the history of mod-
ern music. In strictly technical terms—that is, in the correct or incor-
rect use of techniques—the category could be replaced with the term
“radical dissonance.” As Adorno explains with reference to Schoen-
berg’s atonal works, “The Wrst atonal works are case studies in the
sense of psychoanalytical dream case studies” (Philosophy of Modern
Music, 39).7 This character cancels the notion of aesthetic appreciation,
07Hohendahl.qxd 7/14/2005 10:27 AM Page 174

174 PETER UWE HOHENDAHL

which moderate modernism still wants to preserve. In other words,

Adorno underscores the impossibility of an assessment based on
given aesthetic concepts—unless their meaning can be detached from
the tradition, allowing the ugly to become a positive term. However,
we have to note that this reversal is consonant with the notion of
progress in modern art, and speciWcally in modern music. Adorno
does not mean to support a conscious return to older forms, to folk-
lore or non-European art forms. His trajectory of modern music is
tied to the development of European music and in particular to the
fate of German music. This sets him apart, as we will see, from simul-
taneous trends in art criticism where the concept of the primitive
plays a crucial role.
In Adorno’s critique of Stravinsky in the second part of The
Philosphy of Modern Music, this difference becomes quite clear. Based
on the concept of immanent progress in music, he makes Stravinsky
responsible for a turn in contemporary music toward a restoration of
the tonal system. “In Stravinsky, the desire of the adolescent is ever
stubbornly at work; it is the struggle of the youth to become a valid,
proven classicist” (Philosophy of Modern Music, 137).8 According to
Adorno, the price that Stravinsky has to pay for this desire is a lack of
rigor and consistency that becomes equivalent with regression. Yet
the hidden classicism of Stravinsky, who appears to be part of the
vanguard, is only one element that Adorno Wnds problematic. Of
equal if not greater concern is Stravinsky’s ambivalence toward the
idea of culture, speciWcally his interest in folklore and the primitive.
Stravinsky’s rebellion against tradition invokes the barbaric and sus-
pends the rules of musical culture. For Adorno, both tendencies, the
lack of rigor and the Xirtation with the primitive or folkloristic,
demonstrate Stravinsky’s compromise, his lack of persistence vis-à-
vis the logic of the advanced musical material. “This tendency leads
from commercial art—which readied the soul for sale as a commer-
cial good—to the negation of the soul in protest against the character
of consumer goods: to music’s declaration of loyalty to its physical
basis, to its reduction to the phenomenon, which assumes objective
meaning in that it renounces, of its own accord, any claim to mean-
ing” (Philosophy of Modern Music, 142).9 Stravinsky’s compromise brings
him close to the very culture industry that he means to reject. In this
respect Adorno’s critique of Stravinsky is similar to his indictment of
07Hohendahl.qxd 7/14/2005 10:27 AM Page 175

AESTHETIC VIOLENCE 175

Wagner: A compromised rebellion results in technical regression,

which thereby becomes part of a commercialized culture.10
Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps in particular provokes Adorno’s
polemic, since this work, while musically the most advanced, openly
embraces the fashionable cult of the primitive. “This [Sacre du Prin-
temps] belongs to the years when wild men came to be called primi-
tives, to the sphere of Frazer and Lévy-Bruhl, and further of Freud’s
Totem and Taboo” (Philosophy of Modern Music, 146).11 Adorno refuses
to acknowledge the attempt to celebrate the cultic sacriWce of primi-
tive societies that the anthropologists have reconstructed, since for
him it is nothing but an “anti-humanistic sacriWce to the collective”
(Philosophy of Modern Music, 145) (“antihumanistisches Opfer ans
Kollektiv” Gesammelte Schriften, 12:129). While Adorno does not sug-
gest that Stravinsky seriously wants to reenact a mythic sacriWce, he
opposes the uncritical celebration of a primitive past determined by
the subjugation of the individual. The seemingly detached presenta-
tion of the sacriWce on the stage remains, at least in Adorno’s eyes, a
regressive move: “When the avant-garde embraced African sculpture,
the reactionary telos of the movement was totally concealed: this
reaching out for primitive history seemed, rather, to serve the libera-
tion of strangulated art rather than its regimentation” (Philosophy of
Modern Music, 146).12 Adorno is aware that Stravinsky’s critique of
modern culture owes its impulse to the very liberalism it undermines,
but this subversion, he argues, ultimately afWrms fascist violence.
The aesthetic celebration of the mythic sacriWce in Stravinsky’s
music consciously violates the traditional aesthetic code in two ways.
On the one hand, it openly shows the barbaric act; on the other, it
breaks away from a romantic musical sensibility and embraces the
primitive, also in musical terms. Yet this conXuence of theatrical con-
tent and music does not achieve what Adorno demands, that is,
musical progress. Rather, Stravinsky produces a compromised avant-
garde in which the subversion of established culture encourages the
rise of social and political barbarism. This means that Adorno rejects
a form of the ugly that is incompatible with his concept of artistic
progress. While The Philosophy of Modern Music acknowledges the
legitimacy of the ugly in Schoenberg’s music, in the case of Stravin-
sky the verdict is negative because the ugly is linked to a form of
regressive primitivism. There can be little doubt that Adorno’s harsh
07Hohendahl.qxd 7/14/2005 10:27 AM Page 176

176 PETER UWE HOHENDAHL

critique was inXuenced by the increasing threat of the Third Reich in

the late 1930s. It becomes urgent for Adorno to carefully distinguish
the aesthetic revolution of the European avant-garde and the political
revolution of European fascism. The rather abrupt rejection of turn-
of-the-century primitivism, for instance in the negative reference to
African sculpture (Negerplastik), contains an unresolved tension be-
tween the aesthetic and the sociopolitical, a tension to which Adorno
returns in Aesthetic Theory.

Adorno’s critique of Stravinsky insists on the difference between the

early European avant-garde around 1900 in Paris and its reassess-
ment in the late 1930s. Now the cult of the primitive appears in a dif-
ferent light because the barbarism of the Nazis has become the literal
application, the negation of high culture. Adorno’s humanistic de-
fense of a progressive, future-oriented concept of history represses
those moments that would question the concept of progress itself.
However, in the Wnal analysis, the discussion about primitive culture
around 1900 was a discussion about the liberal concept of progress.
This is evident in the two works Adorno mentions, namely Freud’s
Totem und Tabu and Carl Einstein’s study Negerplastik. Both challenge
the notion of progress on which the liberal conception of history was
built.
At this point, the analysis of Adorno’s thought requires a detour,
namely a closer examination of Einstein’s work. For the writer and
art critic Einstein a serious reappraisal of African art was needed for
two reasons. First, the contemporary interest in so-called primitive cul-
tures (including African cultures) throws light on the aesthetic ideas
of the European avant-garde. There are, Einstein suggests, signiWcant
parallels between the spatial conWguration of Cubism and traditional
African sculptures. Second, these parallels are reason enough to ques-
tion the conventional evaluation of African art as undeveloped and
aesthetically unsophisticated. In other words, a serious and rigorous
understanding of African art must challenge the conceptual appara-
tus of European art history. The critic has to remove layers of preju-
dices based on a Eurocentric conception of aesthetic development.
“From the very beginning the negro is seen as the inferior part who
has to be ruthlessly categorized; and what he has to offer is a priori
judged as Xawed. Fairly vague hypotheses of evolution were carelessly
07Hohendahl.qxd 7/14/2005 10:27 AM Page 177

AESTHETIC VIOLENCE 177

applied to him; for some critics he must submit to such procedures in

order to fulWll a false concept of the primitive.”13 A methodologically
rigorous engagement therefore requires a preliminary rejection of
evolutionary theories and a distinct framework for the analysis of the
material. In his methodological reXections Einstein underscores the
dubious character of the term “primitive.”14 While it may serve as a
positive term in a discourse that focuses on the elements of advanced
civilizations, it also reinforces the contrast between European and
African culture, thereby undercutting the very possibility of a mean-
ingful comparative interpretation. While Einstein means to examine
so-called primitive art, he does not want to emphasize its primitivism
as a mere aesthetic stimulus for late European civilizations, the kind
of stimulus Adorno criticized in his polemic against Stravinsky.
What are the requirements for this task? It will be necessary to
distinguish between those elements that Einstein explicitly mentions
and those that are part of his project but remain invisible in his argu-
ment. Although Einstein acknowledges the impact of modern art on
the new assessment of African art, he warns against premature com-
parisons and calls for a distinct approach to African sculptures. At the
same time, he has to concede that there is little empirical knowledge
about African art history, neither in terms of geographical regions
(tribe culture) nor in terms of historical development. Therefore he is
left with the idea of a stylistic approach (“stilkritischer Aufbau”), an
idea he rejects because of its problematic concept of development
from simple to more complex forms. This leaves the critic with a
highly heterogeneous collection of objects without a grasp of the
totality. In this situation, Einstein decides in favor of a strictly phe-
nomenological approach—a comparative analysis of the objects with-
out regard to their background and their historical origin. According
to Einstein, their striking features demonstrate the typical moment of
African art.
It is worth noting that Einstein’s method is as much the result of
a lack of positive knowledge as an a priori preference for a formalist
approach. One cannot argue therefore that Einstein rejects the con-
cept of history and progress. What he rejects is the application of Euro-
pean history to non-European cultures. Einstein’s warning against
evolutionary thinking is meant to stop empty speculation in a Weld
with very few secure markers. Given the lack of historical concreteness
07Hohendahl.qxd 7/14/2005 10:27 AM Page 178

178 PETER UWE HOHENDAHL

and depth, Einstein’s formalist method searches for similarities and

contrasts. He contrasts the African sculpture with the development of
sculpture in Europe by setting up the opposition “plastisch”—“male-
risch,” and examines similarities between African and modern Euro-
pean art under the category “cubic conception of space” (“kubische
Raumanschauung” (Einstein, Werke, 1:254–61). Above all, however, he
emphasizes the religious nature of African sculpture, namely the fact
that the Wgures are cult objects. Nonetheless, he does not draw the
conclusion that, because of their religious nature, the sculptures are
part of an earlier phase of culture, which European post-Renaissance
art had left behind. In Einstein’s study African culture stands apart,
except in formal terms, namely in the conWguration of space.
What does this mean for the assessment of the “primitive”? For
Einstein it is important to remove from the evaluation of African
sculpture the reproach of aesthetic deWciency, especially the lack of
formal beauty. The formal qualities of the Wgures, he insists, have to
be understood and evaluated in the context of African cult practices:
“We will avoid the mistake of misunderstanding the art of the Afri-
can people based on unconscious memories of some European art
forms, because we approach African art in formal terms as an en-
closed realm.”15 Einstein underscores the formal reasons for the par-
ticularity of African art. In other words, he treats the formal and the
cultural aspect as codetermining the Wgure. The African artist is faced
with a formal task that is different from that of the European artist
and therefore, as Einstein suggests, also arrives at a different solution.
Einstein emphasizes the cubic, three-dimensional character of the
Wgures, but not as the result of a movement that suggests three-
dimensionality; instead, three-dimensionality is instantly and com-
pletely realized in the form of the Wgure and can be comprehended as
such by the viewer (“totale Form, . . . die in einem Sehakt den
Beschauer bestimmt” [Einstein, Werke, 1:256]). This formal structure
is not to be confused with a naturalist rendering of the body. In his
discussion of the representation of the body, Einstein makes this quite
clear: “Frequently African sculptures are criticized for their so-called
proportional Xaws; but one has to understand that the optical dis-
continuity of space is transformed into puriWed form, i.e. into an order
(since we are dealing with plastic form) in which the different parts
are individually valued.”16 What appears to the untrained European
07Hohendahl.qxd 7/14/2005 10:27 AM Page 179

AESTHETIC VIOLENCE 179

eye as deformed and therefore ugly and barbaric reveals its formal
consistency to a viewer who recognizes the cubic quality of the sculp-
ture and the logic of its form. Proportions do not follow the require-
ments of a realistic representation; instead, “it depends to what
extent the signiWcant depth quotients, by which I mean the plastic
resultant, are expected to express depth.”17 Einstein’s analysis under-
scores the totality of the form rather than the aspect of representation.
While he does not deny that the sculpture is meant to represent the
God, he takes the religious meaning more or less for granted.
This conscious disregard in the discussion of the cubic form draws
attention to the unacknowledged tension of Einstein’s approach. On
the one hand, he means to establish the unique cultural context of
African art by stressing the religious quality (cult practices); on the
other, he wants to isolate the formal structure. While the religious
emphasis would encourage the moment of representation (the God),
the formal emphasis allows the comparison with European art. Un-
like Adorno, Einstein sees a legitimate afWnity between African art and
European Cubism. Cubism, he suggests, rediscovered spatial princi-
ples that African art had already established. In Einstein’s mind, the
comparison legitimizes both sides. The truth of modern European art
supports the value of African art, while the authenticity of African art
(rooted in religion) underscores the legitimacy of the European
avant-garde. In Einstein’s approach the problem of primitivism dis-
appears, since the designation of African art as “primitive” is based
on a European misconception. By introducing a separate logic for
African art, Einstein can validate the inXuence of African art that
Adorno acknowledges with suspicion. Yet, we have to note that his
African logic remains rather static and, as Einstein concedes, without
historical depth. Therefore he contrasts European development with
African being—in Negerplastik with a preference for the African side.
At the same time, he remains attached to the concept of historical
development when he discusses European art, as his later work Die
Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts (1926) makes quite clear. This raises the
question, then, of how the impact of non-European art on European
modernism around 1900 can be accounted for. The embrace of the
barbaric, which for Adorno remains potentially a moment of regres-
sion, is for Einstein primarily a shift in the framework, a merging of
two cultures, or, more precisely, a merging of formal structures.
07Hohendahl.qxd 7/14/2005 10:27 AM Page 180

180 PETER UWE HOHENDAHL

Compared with Einstein’s extensive analysis of African sculp-

tures, Adorno’s brief remarks about the problematic character of
“primitivism” seem insufWcient. Especially his concept of artistic
progress, derived from his interpretation of the new Vienna School,
seems to conWrm the dominance of the European development, pos-
sibly even a linear conception of history. Yet Adorno’s question is
different from Einstein’s concerns. While the latter responds critically
to cultural thought patterns, Adorno looks at the return of the re-
pressed. For him the celebration of the primitive marks a problematic
critique of modern European culture because it simply refuses to deal
with the accumulated burden of human history. This will be, of course,
the central theme of Dialectic of Enlightenment, written a few years
later. Still, Einstein’s study Negerplastik was a challenge that Adorno
refused to take seriously when he wrote the second part of The Phi-
losophy of Modern Music, presumably because of his concern with the
fate of European history. One can see the traces of this rejection even
in Aesthetic Theory. In different parts of the text he returns to the ques-
tion of archaic art, when he examines the question of the origin of art.

A brief recapitulation of Dialectic of Enlightenment is inevitable in

order to explicate the relevance of the archaic and primitive in Ador-
no’s thought. Ostensibly the text addresses the failure of the Enlight-
enment, the failure of progress in human history. More speciWcally,
Horkheimer and Adorno argue that the overcoming of myth has
remained incomplete. The result is a new kind of barbarism intro-
duced and propagated by totalitarian regimes. At the philosophical
level, the violence of the totalitarian state corresponds to the return of
the mythic, which Adorno addresses in the Odysseus excursus. At
the center of this discussion stands the concept of the sacriWce. The
need to sacriWce a preselected member of the collective for the good
of the same collective is described by Adorno as “a state of archaic
deWciency, in which it is hardly possible to make any distinction
between human sacriWce and cannibalism.”18 For Adorno magic
thought, which legitimizes and rationalizes human sacriWce, is irra-
tional in its support of nonfreedom. As Adorno writes, “The magic
collective interpretation of sacriWce, which wholly denies its rational-
ity, is its rationalization: but the neat enlightened assumption that,
like ideology today, it could once have been the truth, is too naïve”
07Hohendahl.qxd 7/14/2005 10:27 AM Page 181

AESTHETIC VIOLENCE 181

(Dialectic of Enlightenment, 52). The concept of progress, central to the

enlightenment, is always already compromised by myth, since rea-
son rationalized the very structures it means to overcome. What stays
in place, Adorno argues, is the pattern of exchange. Even the rational
critique of sacriWce in the name of self-preservation holds on to the
notion of exchange. The civilizing process itself, by means of ratio-
nality, is the source of mythic irrationality: “This very denial, the nu-
cleus of all civilizing rationality, is the germ cell of a proliferating
mythic irrationality” (Dialectic of Enlightenment, 54). As Adorno
points out, Odysseus’s cunning, his superior rationality, can defeat
the older mythic forces, but remains tied to the fundamental struc-
ture. He gains control over nature by subjecting himself to the laws of
nature—it is self-preservation through adaptation.
The victory of the Enlightenment is based on the elimination of
the irrational forces of myth. The price to be paid for this victory was
the need to dominate nature and, even more important, human self-
destruction, which means that mythic structures have not been truly
overcome. “In the enlightened world mythology has entered into the
profane. In its blank purity, the reality which has been cleansed of
demons and their conceptual descendants assumes the numinous
character which the ancient world attributed to demons” (Dialectic of
Enlightenment, 28). The return of mythic terror challenges the idea of
progress that the Enlightenment deWned as its goal; moreover, it chal-
lenges the notions of linear history and stages of evolution. Thus
Horkheimer and Adorno’s understanding of the dialectical process of
history places the emphasis on the copresence of the old and the new,
an alignment that deWes the idea of progress. The ancient terror, they
suggest, has not disappeared; it has only taken on a new form. In
Dialectic of Enlightenment the relevance of their insight for aesthetic
production, an aspect that would especially interest Adorno, is not
closely examined, but the presence of the archaic or primitive in the
modern world is acknowledged as a fundamental problem that can-
not be brushed aside as a mere fashionable phenomenon. Therefore
Adorno’s brief treatment of the question in his critique of Stravinsky
proves unsatisfactory.

Although Adorno’s last work has been rightly deWned as a theory of

the modern work of art, there are a number of competing concerns
07Hohendahl.qxd 7/14/2005 10:27 AM Page 182

182 PETER UWE HOHENDAHL

that are either closely related to the central theme or surface only here
and there. One of them is the origin of art and the nature of archaic
art. A lengthy excursus is dedicated to questions of origin, which the
editors offer as part of the Paralipomena.19 It has the form of a critical
assessment of the existing literature on this topic. By and large,
Adorno remains unimpressed by the work that has been done in this
Weld, since he is dissatisWed with the prevailing methods. BrieXy put,
Adorno is equally suspicious of an ontological approach (Heidegger)
and the results of positivistic research. Still, he is also not satisWed
with Croce’s verdict that the question of the origin of art is aestheti-
cally irrelevant, for he maintains, against Croce, that art cannot be
categorized as “an invariant form of consciousness” (Aesthetic Theory,
326). Hence, the search for the origin of art is deWned as the search for
historical beginnings, more precisely for the moment when art sepa-
rates itself from the oldest known cultic practices. Ultimately, Adorno
is less interested in the distinction between the camp that under-
scores the naturalistic representation in the oldest works (Arnold
Hauser, for example) and scholars who stress the symbolic meaning.
When he speaks in his own voice, he foregrounds the beginnings of
subjectivity as a crucial step for the production of art: “Although
expression is seemingly an aspect of subjectivity, in it—externaliza-
tion—there dwells just as much that is not the self, that probably is
the collective. In that the subject, awakening to expression, seeks col-
lective sanction, expression is already evidence of a Wssure” (Aesthetic
Theory, 328).20 Adorno focuses neither on representation nor on sym-
bolic meaning; instead, he insists on the moment of expression as a
decisive element. Here we have to note that he deWnes expression as
always already mediated by the Non-Ego, namely the collective.
Therefore, as Adorno concludes, it is impossible to grasp the original
unity of art. “Wesenseinheit” (Gesammelte Schriften, 7:484), as the
philosophical point of departure, already presupposes a distinction
within the work, on the one hand (material and form), and the social
collective, on the other.
Following the direction of Dialectic of Enlightenment, Adorno’s own
understanding of early art emphasizes the moment of mimesis as the
oldest, pre-aesthetic approach in which, as part of the magic practice,
subject and object are not yet distinguished. In the earliest known art-
works, however, this state is already surpassed, for instance in works
07Hohendahl.qxd 7/14/2005 10:27 AM Page 183

AESTHETIC VIOLENCE 183

such as the cave paintings. These paintings, according to Adorno, are

characterized by “striking traces of autonomous elaboration” (Aes-
thetic Theory, 329)—i.e. by aesthetic qualities—without losing the magic
quality of early mimesis. It is this second aspect that also marks later
art as something that has not quite caught up with the process of civ-
ilization. Returning to the central theme of Dialectic of Enlightenment,
Adorno writes, “But aesthetic comportment is not altogether rudi-
mentary. An irrevocable necessity of art and preserved by it, aesthetic
comportment contains what has been belligerently excised from civi-
lization and repressed, as well as the human suffering under the loss,
a suffering already expressed in the earliest forms of mimesis” (Aes-
thetic Theory, 330).21 While the original separation of mimetic impulse
and aesthetic production can only be determined after it happened,
the artwork, including the advanced work, cannot completely detach
itself from the magic element. For Adorno, who looks back at the
origins of art from the perspective of the modern work of art, these
traces of mimesis are a signiWcant moment, a form of regression in
the eyes of scientiWc rationalization; yet it is a form of regression that
remains essential for humanity as long as the concept of reason is tied
to human self-destruction.
In one of the fragments of the Paralipomena Adorno attempts to
deWne the relationship between aesthetic and pre-aesthetic moments
in the artwork. He suggests that ancient art (vergangene Kunst) is not
coincidental with its cultic function, but it cannot be described as the
opposite; “Rather, art tore itself free from cult objects by a leap in
which the cultic element was both transformed and preserved, and
this structure is reproduced on an expanding scale at every level of its
history” (Aesthetic Theory, 286).22 Put differently, the history of art pre-
serves the cultic element in all its phases, including European mod-
ernism. It is not accidental that a closely related fragment examines
the nature of the cultic or mimetic moment. Looking at modern art, in
particular at the works of Picasso, Adorno notes the “marks of the
frightening” (Aesthetic Theory, 287) (“Male des Schreckhaften” [Gesam-
melte Schriften, 7:426]), i.e. the shock produced in the viewer by the
deformation of the represented object. Unlike Einstein, Adorno does
not interpret the deformation in Cubism as an exclusively formal
problem. Rather, he insists on the presence of older elements, a his-
torically legitimate return of the horror in cultic Wgures. This means
07Hohendahl.qxd 7/14/2005 10:27 AM Page 184

184 PETER UWE HOHENDAHL

that, in Adorno’s late thought, the ugly is not a purely formal ques-
tion; rather, it is closely linked to the larger issue of the origin of art
and the signiWcance of the cultic element. As long as one looks at
Adorno’s understanding of the ugly exclusively or primarily in the
context of the history of aesthetics, one will miss this crucial link. The
organization of Aesthetic Theory suggests such an approach, since
the question of the ugly is discussed in the traditional proximity to
the beautiful. However, this proximity is deceptive, for Adorno, not-
withstanding his high regard for Kant and Hegel, remains hostile to
the idea of classicism.23 Hence he insists not only on the historical pri-
ority of the ugly but also on its continued relevance in modern art.
As a critic of modern art (with an emphasis on music) Adorno
realizes that the conventional deWnition of the ugly as a negation of
the beautiful does little to explain the powerful presence of the ugly
in modern art, because a formal deWnition can at best acknowledge
the phenomena but not assess their origin and legitimacy. Yet it is
precisely the legitimacy of the ugly that is at the center of his analy-
sis. It determines both the content and the form of the artwork. The
representations of social misery in naturalist plays and novels vio-
lates the conventional aesthetic code; even more explicitly the “Wider-
wärtige und Abstoßende” make their appearance in avant-garde
poetry (i.e. in Baudelaire and Benn). Adorno comments: “The re-
pressed who sides with the revolution is, according to the standards
of the beautiful life in an ugly society, uncouth and distorted by
resentment, and he bears all the stigmas of degradation under the
burden of unfree—moreover, manual—labor” (Aesthetic Theory, 48).24
It is the task of modern art to be on the side of those social phenom-
ena that have been treated as taboo. Yet we have to note that Adorno
does not speak out in favor of the aestheticization of the ugly; in fact,
he explicitly problematizes the use of humor in Poetic Realism as a
means to tone down and integrate the abject. The critical function of
the modern artwork, speciWcally its opposition to the social status
quo, is supported and enhanced by the presentation of the ugly.
For two reasons, however, Adorno’s advocacy of the ugly should
not be confused with a naive commitment to naturalism. First of all,
Adorno resolutely rejects the poetic celebration of human suffering;
second, he underscores the formal demands of the artwork. The
transformation of the ugly into form results in the cruel. By opening
07Hohendahl.qxd 7/14/2005 10:27 AM Page 185

AESTHETIC VIOLENCE 185

itself to the cruel, the artwork resists its own tendency to strive for
formal reconciliation. Adorno notes: “The subjective domination of
the act of forming is not imposed on irrelevant materials but is read
out of them; the cruelty of forming is mimesis of myth, with which it
struggles” (Aesthetic Theory, 50).25 The radical formal experiment, which
makes visible the cruel, repeats the moment of cruelty in myth, but it
does not stop there. At the same time, Adorno suggests, the cruel con-
tains a moment of critical self-reXection. Art “despairs over the claim
to power that it fulWlls in being reconciled” ( Aesthetic Theory, 50).26
While the representation of the ugly in the artwork as a form of
social criticism is an important point in Adorno’s inquiry; it by no
means exhausts the signiWcance of the ugly. Adorno’s brief discus-
sion of the cruel points to another, deeper level of his argument,
namely the banished but ultimately not overcome power of myth in
the modern world. This is the place where the central theme of Dialec-
tic of Enlightenment merges with the analysis of the origin of art in
Aesthetic Theory. Adorno’s resistance to the idea of formal reconcilia-
tion in German classicism, insofar as it denies or minimizes human
suffering, leads him to the archaic and primitive where the aesthetic
reconciliation has not yet occurred. Although he strongly empha-
sizes, as we have seen, the “Sprung” between magic practices and art,
he equally stresses the importance of the mythic ground. This, how-
ever, means that the ugly is prior to the beautiful: “If one originated
in the other, it is beauty that originated in the ugly, and not the re-
verse” (Aesthetic Theory, 50).27 This seemingly formal shift (the beauti-
ful becomes the negation of the ugly) opens up a dimension of art
that traditional aesthetic theory could not accommodate within its
system. Following the strategy of Dialectic of Enlightenment, Adorno’s
own theory embraces the ugly in both the archaic and the modern
work because they share, although in very different ways, the impact
of mythic structures; that is to say, they are participating in as well as
negating the power of myth. In the reversal suggested by Adorno, the
beautiful takes on a new meaning. It becomes part of the historical
process of a problematic human history. “In this principle [of order]
the antithesis to the archaic is implicit as the play of forces of the
beautiful single whole; the qualitative leap of art is a smallest transi-
tion. By virtue of this dialectic the image of the beautiful is metamor-
phosed into the movement of enlightenment as a whole” (Aesthetic
07Hohendahl.qxd 7/14/2005 10:27 AM Page 186

186 PETER UWE HOHENDAHL

Theory, 52).28 BrieXy put, the concept of the beautiful is historically

marked as the transition from the archaic and primitive to a later cul-
tural stage. While this transition, according to Adorno, contains in
itself a moment of progress, a stronger articulation of the aesthetic, it
cannot completely escape the bond with the archaic. “The afWnity of
all beauty with death has its nexus in the idea of pure form that art
imposes on the diversity of the living and that is extinguished in it”
(Aesthetic Theory, 52).29 Where art succeeds to bring about aesthetic
reconciliation, it does so at a high price, namely the death of the non-
aesthetic material. This brings us to a somewhat unexpected conclu-
sion: The rigorous defense of the autonomy of art, a central theme of
Aesthetic Theory, Wnds its limit in the concept of the ugly, which is a
label for the primitive and archaic. Although the ugly is grounded in
the archaic, i.e. in the sphere of nonfreedom, it also articulates the
force of life against the death of the aesthetic form.

As a formal treatment of an aesthetic category, Adorno’s section on

the ugly comes across as heterogeneous and incomplete. The author
appears to be unable to make up his mind what exactly he wants to
examine. The frequent shift in emphasis from the philosophical tradi-
tion to modern art, the role of the archaic, and the relationship
between myth and art confuses a reader who is expecting the devel-
opment of a linear argument. Obviously Aesthetic Theory refuses to
honor this expectation and places the emphasis on the unfolding of
the conceptual material. One has to Wnd the right key in order to open
the section. Although Adorno seems to call attention to the impor-
tance of the philosophical tradition by making it the point of depar-
ture for his discussion, it turns out not to be the key that opens the
door to his deeper concerns. Instead, the signiWcance of the ugly for
the articulation of the modern artwork points us in the right direc-
tion. The subversive force of the advanced work of art violates con-
ventional aesthetic norms by foregrounding the ugly and rejects the
false reconciliation of the beautiful. The critical function of the ugly in
modern art, however, is closely connected with Adorno’s concept of
history in Dialectic of Enlightenment. The dialectic of progress and
regression resurfaces in Aesthetic Theory as the dialectic of the modern
and the archaic. For this reason, the difference between magical practices
07Hohendahl.qxd 7/14/2005 10:27 AM Page 187

AESTHETIC VIOLENCE 187

and early art is of great importance for Adorno. This means that
behind the question of the ugly lies the larger issue of the primitive
and its meaning in modern, enlightened society. Of course, Adorno
was not the Wrst theorist to discover this problem. Nietzsche and
Freud had offered decisive insights with which Adorno was familiar.
As we have seen, in The Philosophy of Modern Music his response to
Freud was brief and insufWcient; the implicit engagement with Nietz-
sche in Dialectic of Enlightenment, on the other hand, was more seri-
ous. But it is not the question of inXuence that is of interest for the
present discussion. Instead, the Wnal section will focus on Adorno’s
place within the theoretical constellation of modernism.
When Freud, in his essay “Animism, Magic, and the Omnipo-
tence of Thought,” mentions in passing that there is an area in mod-
ern culture that has remained close to the stage of animism, namely
art, the proximity to Adorno is hard to overlook. Freud writes, “Only
in art does it still happen that a man who is consumed by desires per-
forms something resembling the accomplishment of those desires
and that what he does in play produces emotional effects—thanks to
artistic illusion—just as though it were something real.”30 More speci-
Wcally, Freud suggests that art was originally not a purely aesthetic
phenomenon but served other purposes, among them magic func-
tions. At the same time, one must note that this observation—which
Adorno must have known—is part of a larger argument concerning
the place of animism and magic in human development. Conse-
quently, for Freud the proximity (if not the identity) of art and magic,
and not the difference, is the signiWcant insight. The essay develops
an evolutionary model in which Freud calls attention to and then
emphasizes the parallel between individual development and the
evolution of the species. Primitive thought, i.e. animism, corresponds
to narcissism in the same manner as the religious phase (the creation
of gods) corresponds to the stage of “object attachment” outside the
ego. In Freud’s model there is no attempt to give a complete explana-
tion of art or the aesthetic. The example he cites, namely the paintings
in French caves, emphasizes an early stage of art when magic and
aesthetic operated side by side. He assumes that the magic functions
are today for the most part extinct (“zum großen Teil erloschen,”
[Studienausgabe, 9:378]). Still, it is important to note that Freud writes
07Hohendahl.qxd 7/14/2005 10:27 AM Page 188

188 PETER UWE HOHENDAHL

“zum großen Teil” and does not thereby exclude the continued effect
of older practices in art. In the area of art, the borderline between the
primitive and the more developed form appears to be less clearly
marked, which leaves art in an ambiguous position vis-à-vis the
developmental scheme that Freud uses. Still, Freud leaves no doubt
about the process of enlightenment and its goal. Human maturity is
reached in the scientiWc, postreligious stage when all thoughts of
omnipotence, which motivated primitive cultures to develop elabo-
rate animistic thought structures, have been relinquished. For Freud,
full enlightenment is not the equivalent of domination of nature but
the resigned insight that human beings have, individually as well
as collectively, only limited power. While Freud holds on to an evo-
lutionary scheme to map human history, he also questions it by
drawing attention to psychic pathology. In his comparison between
neurotics and primitives, he alludes to the insight that the narratives
of the Enlightenment (which Freud shared) must be regarded as fail-
ures, or, in a different reading, he points to the impossibility of the
Enlightenment.
The overlap between Freud and Adorno is considerable. Both
theorists underscore the ambiguity of art in the history of human cul-
ture. Both point to the proximity of magic and art, but they place the
emphasis differently. Where Freud highlights the proximity of art
and magic as a deWning moment of primitive culture but thinks of
modern art as mostly free of such elements, Adorno, as we have seen,
emphasizes the initial difference, thereby focusing on the speciWcity
of the aesthetic as a vital moment of its origin, but he allows for a
greater presence of the magic in the modern artwork. In other words,
by remaining attached to the primitive, the advanced artwork resists
the process of Enlightenment. Of course, there is considerably more
legitimacy to this resistance in Adorno’s thought than in Freud’s the-
ory. Still, Adorno recognizes the ambiguity of the modern artwork, its
tendency to return to the logic of mimesis. For Adorno there is no
longer a clear-cut distinction between modern and primitive culture,
which Freud takes over from the anthropologists of his time (i.e.
James George Frazer and E. B. Tyler), nor is there a Wrm belief in sci-
ence. The radical critique of historical progress in Dialectic of Enlight-
enment would have shocked even the Freud of “Das Unbehagen in
der Kultur.”
07Hohendahl.qxd 7/14/2005 10:27 AM Page 189

AESTHETIC VIOLENCE 189

In this regard Nietzsche’s critique of the Enlightenment resonates

more strongly with Adorno’s thought. Moreover, Nietzsche’s emphatic
reevaluation of the function of art in the process of culture results in
a new approach to the primitive and, by the same token, to a differ-
ent understanding of science. In The Birth of Tragedy the contrast
between Apollo and Dionysus, between measured form and the erup-
tive forces of the primitive, creates a space for the rejuvenation of
art in Nietzsche’s own time, a renewal that Nietzsche hoped Wag-
ner’s opera would bring about. For the young Nietzsche, this is not
merely an aesthetic question; it concerns the future of culture, since
rationalism, embodied by Socrates and the dominant aspect of West-
ern civilization, has damaged and diminished the forces of life. By
examining Greek tragedy, Nietzsche rediscovers those elements of
early culture that the philologists of his time, saturated with the
ideals of modern classicism, were prone to overlook or failed to take
seriously. In order to celebrate Greek culture as a culture of reconcili-
ation (Versöhnung), he must draw attention to its darker side, namely
the Dionysian orgies. Dionysian culture is portrayed as the oppo-
site of Dorian culture, and Nietzsche comments, “That repulsive
witches’ brew of sensuality and cruelty was powerless here; the only
reminder of it . . . is to be found in the strange mixture and duality in
the affects of the Dionysiac enthusiasts.”31 While Nietzsche acknowl-
edges that the orgiastic cult of Dionysus came from the East, he also
emphasizes the intrinsic quality of the darker side; it is the part that
Apollonian Greek culture had repressed. Nietzsche’s archaeology of
Greek culture results in two discoveries. On the one hand, he uncov-
ers the pre-Olympian world, in other words, the barbaric and cruel;
on the other, he deWnes the world of the Olympian gods as an illu-
sionary aesthetic reality. By turning these layers of culture into prin-
ciples (Prinzipien), Nietzsche can conceive of Greek tragedy as the
mysterious marriage (“geheimnisvolles Ehebündnis,” [Werke in drei
Bänden, 1:35]), the true synthesis of Greek culture. This shift from an
archaeological to a systematic perspective will later enable Nietzsche
to put forth Wagner’s opera as the new cultural synthesis, a rebirth of
ancient tragedy.
The recognition of the barbaric and ugly in archaic culture leads
Nietzsche to a differentiation between literary genres. While the epos
fulWlls the requirements of the Apollonian and tragedy represents a
07Hohendahl.qxd 7/14/2005 10:27 AM Page 190

190 PETER UWE HOHENDAHL

synthesis of the Dionysian and the Apollonian, poetry articulates the

Dionysian element most succinctly. The poet “has become entirely
at one with the primordial unity . . . and he produces a copy of this
primordial unity as music” (Birth of Tragedy, 30).32 As Nietzsche re-
minds us, no aesthetic production can access the “Ur-Eine” without
mediation. The suffering is transformed into music, but this very
process occurs under the impact of the Apollonian principle. The ulti-
mate goal is therefore not the immediate articulation of suffering but
the appearance of redemption. The rediscovery of the barbaric and
ugly in The Birth of Tragedy should not be confused therefore with its
unmitigated celebration. Rather, the purpose is the recognition of
archaic horror as a vital and necessary element of culture that Wnds
its appropriate expression in art. For the early Nietzsche, the aesthetic
justiWcation of life stands at the center of his project. Still, this project
includes the continued efWcacy of the archaic.
Nietzsche makes the loss of myth and the rise of Socratic ratio-
nalism responsible for the decline of Greek culture and therefore calls
for a rebirth of myth. Toward the end of the essay, the Dionysian prin-
ciple and myth seem to merge, although Nietzsche initially distin-
guished them. Greek myth comprises the narrative of the ancient Greek
people. It is, in other words, already one step removed from the
Dionysian principle. This means that the myth of tragedy “partici-
pates fully in the aim of all art, which is to effect a metaphysical trans-
Wguration” (Birth of Tragedy, 113).33 In other words, in Nietzsche’s
schema, myth and art are on the side of the transWguration of unbear-
able suffering. In Dialectic of Enlightenment Adorno and Horkheimer,
as we have seen, differ sharply from this analysis. Myth denotes
the realm of Unfreiheit that characterizes archaic and barbaric, and
its return in totalitarian political systems does not hold a Nietzsch-
ean promise of aesthetic reconciliation. While Nietzsche’s critique
of the Enlightenment moves in the same direction as Adorno and
Horkheimer, it Wnds its goal in aesthetic reconciliation, which means
an indirect legitimation of human suffering. The refusal of aesthetic
reconciliation under the sign of the beautiful is one of the central
considerations of Adorno’s aesthetic theory. For this reason, he
underscores not only the primacy of the ugly over the beautiful but
also the crucial importance of the ugly and horrible in modern art. He
emphasizes the negative moment as a force of opposition that classical
07Hohendahl.qxd 7/14/2005 10:27 AM Page 191

AESTHETIC VIOLENCE 191

philosophy of art keeps in a secondary position. This attitude throws

also a different light on his critique of Stravinsky. His attack on the
celebration of the primitive is possibly also directed at the
sublation of pain and horror in The Birth of Tragedy, since Nietzsche’s
understanding of music keeps it in the realm of aesthetic illusion.
To be sure, Nietzsche’s commitment to Schopenhauer’s meta-
physics, which supported his early assessment of music, later van-
ished. Already in Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, his approach to
music is driven by different concerns. Fragment 217 of the Wrst vol-
ume analyzes the development of modern music in a manner that is
rather close to the perspective of The Philosophy of Modern Music. Nietz-
sche describes the advent of modern music, by which he probably
understood late-Romantic music including Wagner, as a process of
intellectualization. Where older music emphasized the sensual, the
new music underscores the abstract intellectual quality, which means
that the listener has to focus on the meaning. But the increase in
expressive power, Nietzsche suggests, corresponds to a loss in sen-
sual reWnement. The new music is not only louder but also “gröber.”
The point Nietzsche wants to make is that both the structure and the
reception of music have transcended the realm of the beautiful. Nietz-
sche notes, “Then, the ugly side of the world, the side originally hos-
tile to the senses, has now been conquered for music; its sphere of
power especially in the domain of the sublime, dreadful and mysteri-
ous has therewith increased astonishingly.”34 The process of intellec-
tualization legitimizes the ugly, which classical music had either
forbidden or kept on the margins, as a moment of musical expres-
sion. Nietzsche’s response to this development is highly ambivalent.
While he appreciates the increase in symbolic meaning, he also de-
plores the loss of sensuality and the rise of the ugly. Anticipating
Adorno’s concept of the culture industry, he comments on the split
between advanced and popular music. In popular music the ugly
makes its appearance without symbolic meaning. He points to “the
enormous majority growing every year more and more incapable of
comprehending the meaningful even in the form of the sensually
ugly and therefore learning to seize with greater and greater con-
tentment the ugly and disgusting in itself, that is to say the basely
sensual, in music” (Human, All Too Human, 101).35 The distinction be-
tween the meaningful ugly in high art and the ugly in the low forms
07Hohendahl.qxd 7/14/2005 10:27 AM Page 192

192 PETER UWE HOHENDAHL

of mere sensuality allows Nietzsche to deal with the prohibitions of

traditional music aesthetic against the ugly and the repulsive (Ekel-
hafte). It is important to note that the increase of the ugly is not treated
as part of the return of the primitive; rather, it is the result of the new
music’s striving for symbolic meaning. In other words, it is conceived
as an internal process in the history of nineteenth-century music. In
his analysis of Schoenberg’s music, Adorno arrives at a similar posi-
tion. The greater importance of the ugly in modern music is the result
of unresolved dissonances; brieXy put, it is the result of the internal
logic of the composition. There is no need to invoke the Dionysian to
explain the embrace of radical dissonance.
As we have seen, in Dialectic of Enlightenment Adorno revised his
position when he recognized the need to examine the archaic and
primitive more carefully. The concept of myth, broadly deWned, be-
came the vehicle for this exploration. Myth, Adorno and Horkheimer
argued, was not only the opposite of the Enlightenment (as the em-
bodiment of oppression) but also part of the Enlightenment as a form
of reason. Their intertwinement marks the fatal Xaw of history. Hence
a Nietzschean celebration of the Dionysian is completely missing in
Dialectic of Enlightenment. This aspect does not change in Aesthetic
Theory. The stronger recognition of the ugly as a deWning element of
both archaic and modern art is not related to Nietzsche’s Dionysian
primitivism; rather, it draws attention to the critical function of the
work of art. While the early artworks struggle to reveal their distinct
aesthetic character against the realm of the magic, the modern work
demonstrates its critical opposition to classical reconciliation by way
of its refusal of the harmony of beauty. Whereas the later Nietzsche
wavers between the celebration of classicism (Mozart) and the ac-
knowledgment of decadent European modernism (Wagner), Adorno
tends to equate classicism with false aesthetic solutions. In Aesthetic
Theory he acknowledges the archaic and primitive as a crucial ele-
ment of early art, but the perspective is the opposite of that of the
early Nietzsche. Adorno focuses attention on the difference between
art and magic. In short, he underscores the process of civilization, in
which art partakes while it resists the notion of a rational evolution
(science). Artworks need the moment of “Verzauberung” that science
must resolutely refuse.
07Hohendahl.qxd 7/14/2005 10:27 AM Page 193

AESTHETIC VIOLENCE 193

Notes

1. See Siegfried J. Schmidt, “Der philosophische Begriff des Schönen und

des Häßlichen in Adornos Ästhetischer Theorie”; Thomas Huhn, “Diligence and
Industry: Adorno and the Ugly.”
2. See Christoph Menke-Eggers, The Sovereignty of Art: Aesthetic Negativity in
Adorno and Derrida; David Roberts, Art and Enlightenment: Aesthetic Theory after Adorno.
3. See Günter Oesterle, “Entwurf einer Monographie des Häßlichen“; I. M.
Bernstein, The Fate of Art: Aesthetic Alienation from Kant to Derrida and Adorno.
4. See Albrecht Wellmer, The Persistence of Modernity: Essays on Aesthetics,
Ethics, and Postmodernism.
5. See Robert Hullot-Kentor, “The Philosophy of Dissonance: Adorno and
Schönberg.”
6. Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophy of Modern Music; references to subse-
quent citations are given in parentheses. The German text is from Adorno’s
Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 12: “Musik hat unterm Zwang der eigenen sachlichen
Konsequenz die Idee des runden Werkes kritisch aufgelöst und den kollektiven
Wirkungszusammenhang durchschnitten” (36).
7. “Die ersten atonalen Werke sind Protokolle im Sinn von psychoana-
lytischen Traumprotokollen” (Gesammelte Schriften, 12:44).
8. “In Strawinsky bleibt hartnäckig der Wunsch des Halbwüchsigen am
Werk, ein geltender, bewahrter Klassiker zu werden” (Gesammelte Schriften,
12:128).
9. “Die Tendenz führt vom Kunstgewerbe, das die Seele als Ware zurichtet,
zur Negation der Seele im Protest gegen den Warencharakter: zur Vereidigung
der Musik auf die Physis, zu ihrer Reduktion auf die Erscheinung, die objektive
Bedeutung annehme, indem sie auf Bedeuten von sich aus verzichtet”
(Gesammelte Schriften, 12:132).
10. See Andreas Huyssen, “Adorno in Reverse: From Hollywood to Richard
Wagner.”
11. “Es [Sacre du Printemps] gehört den Jahren an, da man die Wilden
Primitive zu nennen begann, der Sphäre von Frazer und Lévy-Bruhl, auch von
‘Totem und Tabu’” (Gesammelte Schriften, 12:136).
12. “Als die Avantgarde zur Negerplastik sich bekannte, war das reak-
tionäre Telos der Bewegung ganz verborgen: der Griff nach der Urgeschichte
schien eher der Entfesselung der eingeschnürten Kunst als ihrer Reglementierung
zu dienen” (Gesammelte Schriften, 12:136).
13. “Der Neger jedoch gilt von Beginn an als der inferiore Teil, der rück-
sichtslos zu bearbeiten ist, und das von ihm Gebotene wird a priori als ein Manko
verurteilt. Leichtfertig deutete man recht vage Evolutionshypothesen auf ihn
zurecht; er mußte dem einen sich ausliefern, um einen Fehlbegriff von
Primitivität abzugeben” (Einstein, Werke, 1:245).
14. For a general discussion of primitivism, see Robert Goldwater,
07Hohendahl.qxd 7/14/2005 10:27 AM Page 194

194 PETER UWE HOHENDAHL

Primitivism in Modern Art; Colin Rhodes, Primitivism and Modern Art; also David
Pan, Primitive Renaissance: Rethinking German Expressionism.
15. “Den Fehler, die Kunst der Neger an einem unbewußten Erinnern
irgendwelcher europäischer Kunstform zu schanden zu machen, werden wir
vermeiden, da die afrikanische Kunst aus formalen Gründen als umrissener
Bezirk vor uns steht” (Werke, 1:254).
16. “HäuWg tadelt man an den Negerskulpturen die sogenannten
Proportionsfehler; man begreife, die optische Diskontinuität des Raumes wird in
Formklärung übersetzt, in eine Ordnung der, da es um Plastizität geht, nach
ihrem plastischen Ausdruck verschieden gewerteten Teile” (Werke, 1:258).
17. “. . .sind davon abhängig, wie sehr von entscheidenden Tiefenquo-
tienten aus, worunter ich die plastische Resultante verstehe, Tiefe ausgedrückt
werden soll” (Werke, 1:259–60).
18. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment.
19. Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 325–31. The original German text
of Ästhetische Theorie is quoted from Gesammelte Schriften, 7:480–90.
20. “Während Ausdruck scheinbar zur Subjektivität rechnet, wohnt ihm,
der Entäußerung, ebenso das Nichtich, wohl das Kollektiv inne. Indem das zum
Ausdruck erwachende Subjekt dessen Sanktion sucht, ist der Audruck bereits
Zeugnis eines Risses” (Gesammelte Schriften, 7:485–86).
21. “Aber die ästhetische Verhaltensweise ist nicht durchaus rudimentär. In
ihr, die in der Kunst konserviert wird und deren Kunst unabdingbar bedarf, ver-
sammelt sich, was seit undenklichen Zeiten von Zivilisationen gewalttätig
weggeschnitten, unterdrückt wurde samt dem Leiden der Menschen unter dem
ihnen Abgezwungenen, das wohl schon in den primären Gestalten von Mimesis
sich äußert” (Gesammelte Schriften, 7:487).
22. “Sie [art] hat von den Kultobjekten sich losgerissen durch einen Sprung,
in dem das kultische Moment verwandelt zugleich bewahrt wird, und diese
Struktur reproduziert sich erweitert auf allen Stufen ihrer Geschichte” (Gesam-
melte Schriften, 7:426).
23. See Peter Uwe Hohendahl, Prismatic Thought: Theodor W. Adorno, 75–104.
24. “Das Unterdrückte, das den Umsturz will, ist nach den Normen des
schönen Lebens in der häßlichen Gesellschaft derb, von Ressentiment verzerrt,
trägt alle Male der Erniedrigung unter der Last der unfreien, zumal körperlichen
Arbeit” (Gesammelte Schriften, 7:78).
25. “Die subjektive Herrschaft des Formens ergeht nicht indifferenten
Stoffen, sondern wird aus ihnen herausgelesen, Grausamkeit des Formens ist
Mimesis an den Mythos, mit dem sie umspringt” (Gesammelte Schriften, 7:80).
26. “verzweifelt an dem Machtanspruch, den sie als versöhnte vollstreckt”
(Gesammelte Schriften, 7:81).
27. “Wenn überhaupt, ist das Schöne eher im Häßlichen entsprungen als
umgekehrt” (Gesammelte Schriften, 7:81).
28. “Die Antithesis zum Archaischen ist in diesem [the principle of order]
impliziert, das Kräftespiel des Schönen eines; der qualitative Sprung der Kunst ist
07Hohendahl.qxd 7/14/2005 10:27 AM Page 195

AESTHETIC VIOLENCE 195

ein kleinster Übergang. Kraft solcher Dialektik verwandelt sich das Bild des
Schönen in der Gesamtbewegung von Aufklärung” (Gesammelte Schriften, 7:83).
29. “Die AfWnität aller Schönheit zu ihm hat ihren Ort in der Idee der reinen
Form, die Kunst der Mannigfaltigkeit des Lebendigen auferlegt, das in ihr er-
lischt” (Gesammelte Schriften, 7:84).
30. Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition, vol. 13, here 90; subsequently cited
as Standard Edition in the text. The German quotations are taken from Freud,
Studienausgabe, vol. 9, here 378; subsequently cited as Studienausgabe in the text.
“In der Kunst allein kommt es noch vor, daß ein von Wünschen verzehrter
Mensch etwas der Befriedigung ähnliches macht und daß dieses Spielen—dank
der künstlerischen Illusion—Affektwirkungen hervorruft, als wäre es etwas
Reales” (Studienausgabe, 9:378).
31. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, 21; subse-
quently cited as Birth of Tragedy in the text. Quotations from the original German
text are taken from Werke in drei Bänden, 2nd edition, vol. 1; subsequently cited as
Werke in drei Bänden in the text. “Jener scheußliche Hexentrank aus Wollust und
Grausamheit war hier ohne Kraft: nur die wundersame Mischung und
Doppelheit in den Affekten der dionysischen Schwärmer erinnert an ihn” (Werke
in drei Bänden, 1:27).
32. “gänzlich mit dem Ur-Einen, seinem Schmerz und Widerspruch, eins
geworden . . . produziert das Abbild dieses Ur-Einen als Musik” (Werke in drei
Bänden, 1:37).
33. “nimmt auch vollen Anteil an dieser metaphysischen Verklärungs-
absicht der Kunst überhaupt” (Werke in drei Bänden, 1:130).
34. Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, 100. “Sodann ist die
häßliche, den Sinnen ursprünglich feindselige Seite der Welt für die Musik
erobert worden; ihr Machtbereich namentlich zum Ausdruck des Erhabenen,
Furchtbaren, Geheimnisvollen hat sich damit erstaunlich erweitert” (Werke in drei
Bänden, 1:575).
35. “die ungeheure Überzahl, welche alljährlich immer unfähiger wird, das
Bedeutende auch in der Form der sinnlichen Häßlichkeit zu verstehen und
deshalb nach dem an sich Häßlichen und Ekelhaften, das heißt dem niedrig
Sinnlichen in der Musik mit immer mehr Behagen greifen lernt” (Werke in drei
Bänden, 1:575).

Works Cited

Adorno, Theodor W. Aesthetic Theory. Trans. and ed. by Robert Hullot-Kentor.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
———. Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. 7, Ästhetische Theorie. Ed. Rolf Tiedemann.
Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970.
———. Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. 12, Philosophie der neuen Musik. Ed. Rolf Tiede-
mann. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970.
———. Philosophy of Modern Music. New York: Seabury Press, 1973.
07Hohendahl.qxd 7/14/2005 10:27 AM Page 196

196 PETER UWE HOHENDAHL

Bernstein, I. M. The Fate of Art: Aesthetic Alienation from Kant to Derrida and Adorno.
University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992.
Einstein, Carl. Werke. Vol. 1. Ed. Rolf-Peter Baacke. Berlin: Medusa, 1980.
Freud, Sigmund. The Standard Edition. Vol. 13. London: Hogarth Press, 1955.
———. Studienausgabe. Vol. 9. Ed. Alexander Mitscherlich, Angela Richards, and
James Strachey. Frankfurt: Fischer, 1974.
Goldwater, Robert. Primitivism in Modern Art. New York: Random House, 1938.
Hohendahl, Peter Uwe. Prismatic Thought: Theodor W. Adorno. Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 1995.
Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment. New York:
Herder and Herder, 1972.
Huhn, Thomas. “Diligence and Industry: Adorno and the Ugly.” Canadian Journal
of Political and Social Theory 12 (1988): 138–46.
Hullot-Kentor, Robert. “The Philosophy of Dissonance: Adorno and Schönberg.”
In The Semblance of Subjectivity: Essays on Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory, ed. Thomas
Huhn and Lambert Zuidervaart, 309–20. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997.
Huyssen, Andreas. “Adorno in Reverse: From Hollywood to Richard Wagner.”
NGC, no. 29. (Spring–Summer 1983): 5–29.
Jauß, Hans Robert. Die nicht mehr schönen Künste. Grenzphänomene des Ästhetischen.
Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1968.
Menke-Eggers, Christoph. The Sovereignty of Art: Aesthetic Negativity in Adorno and
Derrida. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Human, All Too Human. Trans. R. I. Hollingdale. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996.
———. The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings. Ed. Raymond Geuss and Ronald
Speirs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
———. Werke in drei Bänden, 2d ed. Vol. 1. Ed. Karl Schlechta. Munich: Hanser,
1960.
Oesterle, Günter. “Entwurf einer Monographie des Häßlichen.” In Zur Modernität
der Romantik, Literaturwissenschaft und Sozialwissenschaft 8, ed. Dieter
Bänsch, 217–97. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1977.
Pan, David. Primitive Renaissance: Rethinking German Expressionism. Lincoln: Uni-
versity of Nebraska Press, 2001.
Rhodes, Colin. Primitivism and Modern Art. London: Thames and Hudson, 1934.
Roberts, David. Art and Enlightenment: Aesthetic Theory after Adorno. Lincoln: Uni-
versity of Nebraska Press, 1991.
Rosenkranz, Karl. Ästhetik des Häßlichen. Ed. Walther Gose und Walter Sachs.
Stuttgart: F. Frommann, 1968.
Schmidt, Siegfried J. “Der philosophische Begriff des Schönen und des Häßlichen
in Adornos Ästhetischer Theorie.” Zeitwende 43 (1972): 94–104.
Wellmer, Albrecht. The Persistence of Modernity: Essays on Aesthetics, Ethics and
Postmodernism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991.