diating between rationality and mimesis because they are in a way incompatible, and
this incompatibility cannot be denied. The value of a work of art in fact depends on
the extent to which it succeeds in highlighting the antithetic moments of both ratio-
nality and mimesis, without eliminating their opposition through some kind of unity
that purports to reconcile the two.^68 This is why Adorno regards tensions, disso-
nances, and paradoxes as basic attributes of modern works of art.
Adorno is convinced that art entails a form of criticism. The critical character of
art is in several respects related to its mimetic quality. In the first instance, art is one
of the few realms of society where the mimetic principle is still privileged. Generally
speaking, society tends to forbid mimesis, and social practice is increasingly domi-
nated by instrumental rationality. In view of this situation, the existence of art as a do-
main not totally permeated by rationality provides in itself a critique of the domination
of rationality. Adorno argues that the uselessness of art, its refusal to be “for-
something-else,” unmistakably implies a form of criticism with regard to a society
where everything is forced to be useful.^69
Against the prevailing dominant mode of thought—identity thinking, which
constantly subsumes the heterogeneous under the heading of sameness and, in
Adorno’s words, is “schooled in exchange”^70 —the principle of mimesis embodies a
“resemblance of artworks to themselves”^71 that makes room for the nonidentical
and the opaque. Art is thus perceived by Adorno as one of the last refuges where real
experience, the experience of the nonidentical, is still possible. He concurs with Ben-
jamin in his opinion that modernity has provoked a crisis of experience by increas-
ingly destroying the conditions that allow individuals to develop their capacity for
genuine experience. Modern art, he states, provides a way to deal with this crisis and
to express it.^72
The very modernity of art in fact depends on how it relates to this crisis. Art
cannot escape this condition: “Il faut être absolument moderne,” says Adorno, thus
repeating Rimbaud’s maxim. For Adorno, however, the statement does not mean
that one should simply accept one’s historical condition; it also implies a need to re-
sist the historical trend. Adorno interprets Rimbaud’s phrase as a categorical imper-
ative that combines an honest assessment of social reality with an equally consistent
opposition to its continuance. If one wants to resist repression and exploitation, one
should not ignore them but recognize them as the actual conditions of existence;
only by doing so can one take action against them. From an artistic point of view, this
means that modern art needs to employ advanced techniques and methods of pro-
duction; it also means that it is obliged to incorporate contemporary experiences.^73
At the same time, however, the implication is that art contains a significant degree
of criticism and opposition to the existing system.
It is this shading that gives Adorno’s aesthetic theory its specific character:
Adorno says modern art as artis critical. The critical value of a work of art is not em-
bodied in the themes it deals with or in the so-called “commitment” of the artist, but
in the artistic process itself. Adorno is convinced that the mimetical potential of art,
4
Architecture as Critique of Modernity