Today art is still understood in the sense of a \u201cwork aesthetic\u201d, but that\u2019s just ideology, part of the spectacle of the art scene. Contemporary art, including the \u201cpolitical\u201d art operating within contemporary art, can no longer produce \u201cworks\u201d; artworks are no longer artworks. But Adorno\u2019s thinking is still based on works of art, and that\u2019s why he hardly has anything to say about contemporary art \u2013 fully aware that it is effectively a total \u201cde-arting of art\u201d.
\nBut what does it mean in the context of the autonomous artwork when we say art is \u201ccritical\u201d? The \u201ccritical\u201d in a work of art is its \u201cknowledge character\u201d: it renders a \u201ctruth\u201d discernible.
\nThis truth is embedded in art, crystallised in the work \u2013 Adorno and Benjamin call it the \u201ctemporal core of truth\u201d. Tightly and thoroughly composed, works have an immanent, inherent, coherent, consistent structure. It is in this structure that the temporal core of truth is embedded \u2013 and, by the way, \u201ctemporal core\u201d means that the work itself is historical, but also historically transitory: the truth absconds\u2026for Adorno, what is needed to extract this temporal core, to grasp the truth, is the possibility of unregimented experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"