Art is permitted to survive only if it renounces the right to be different, and integrates itself into the omnipotent realm of the profane.
Theodor AdornoThe individual mirrors in his individuation the preordained social laws of exploitation, however mediated.
Theodor AdornoRampant technolgy eliminates luxury, but not by declaring privilege a human right; rather, it does so by both raising the general standard of living and cutting off the possibility of fulfilment.
Theodor AdornoDeath is imposed only on creatures, not their creations, and has therefore always appeared in art in a broken form: as allegory.
Theodor AdornoThere is something embarrassing in... the way in which, ... turning suffering into images, harsh and uncompromising though they are, ... wounds the shame we feel in the presence of the victims. For these victims are used to create something, works of art, that are thrown to the consumption of a world which destroyed them.
Theodor Adorno