Theodor Adorno and the construction of artistic modernism

This research aims to discuss transformations in the notion of "modern art" throughout Theodor Adorno's aesthetic writings. Our hypothesis is that Adorno's late work brings to light a theory of modern art that differs from the assumptions of his early writings, due to the diagnosis of an expansion of the very concept of art, which will underpin his conception of the imbrication [Verfransung] of the arts. In the texts of a first period – we will consider those written until the end of the 1940s – the philosopher understands as modern the "most advanced" art in terms of the technical mastery of materials; from the 1950s onwards – we will adopt the text "The Aging of the New Music" as a landmark – Adorno gradually acknowledges that his first theoretical assumptions started to fall behind the latest artistic trends, mainly due to the expansion of artistic fields. His early writings, according to our study, engage mainly with Schoenberg's work and with an analysis of the particularity of Kafka’s literary form, as well as with the difference between artistic modernity and mass culture. In the second model, Adorno recognizes the "aging" of the new music and analyzes the consequences of the serialism developed by the Darmstadt School, besides measuring the unfolding of a crisis in the very sense of art, expressed by Samuel Beckett's literary work, and reviewing his previous considerations about mass culture products that were previously at the margins of his aesthetics, such as cinema. The study of these changes in the philosopher's work should help to elucidate the historical configurations that shaped his aesthetics (AU)