Podcasts
Sandra Corse Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenessee, USA.
This podcast is intended for educational use only.
Adorno's philosophical project was based on a radical reassessment of the subjectobject relationship. He held that Western philosophy and the social structure it reflects demonstrates a flawed or untrue separation of subject and object and encourages a world view in which the subject looks out on 'reality,' knows it, and subjugates it. In such a view, systematic exploitation of the material world creates a commodified and reified totality in which almost everything is designed and produced for profit. Adorno's aesthetic theory argues that artworks provide the only refuge from this world; they both reveal and protest against the historical processes by which our culture habitually thinks of and addresses the physical world.
Though Adorno is generally held to exemplify an elitist attitude toward art that might exclude craft, in fact his aesthetic theory can yield fresh insights when applied to contemporary craft works. His theory sees the individual artwork not as an inert thing placed over and against the subject, but as a process in which concepts, sedimented histories, and other relationships interact with the subject in order to create meaning. The elements of the artwork act both together and against each other in this ongoing process.
Because of its multiplicity and its insistence on both conceptual and material meanings, the Adornian notion of the artwork is particularly applicable to contemporary craft. An analysis of craft pieces by contemporary glass and furniture artists will illustrate these processes.
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L'auteure commente sur les métiers d'art contemporains à partir de la théorie sur l'esthétique du philosophe Adorno, où la division imposée entre le sujet et l'objet disparaît. Elle démontre ce processus en faisant l'analyse d'objets de productions artisanale contmporains.