Another aspect, important to Adorno's formulation, is that artworks never can be conservative. This is due to their dynamic premises: “By emphatically separating themselves from the empirical world, their other, they bear witness that that world itself should be other than it is; they are the unconscious schemata of that world's transformation.” “Fremdkeit zur Welt ist ein Moment der Kunst”. The artwork is therefore, by definition, the other of the empirical world, and the process of the artwork always has to be directed towards 'world transformation'. (Adorno, Theodor W., 1970 & Adorno, Theodor W., 1997)
Coupled with this we have to take into account Adorno's more general definition of what an 'artwork' is, for according to him a lot of what is commonly called 'art' does not fulfil that promise. Adorno opposes relativism in terms of art, he states that there can be no such thing as 'bad' or 'average' art. “Failed artworks are not art: Relative success is alien to art; the average is already the bad.” This means that the idea of success becomes an important element in the constitution of artworks, and, as Adorno goes on to say, “… they are in turn dependent on forms in which their process crystallizes: interpretation, commentary, and critique.” These he considers to be part of the historical arena of the artworks themselves, even though art mocks verbal definition, it is still important for the constitution of the work to be in a dynamic relationship with the theoretical and verbal. (Adorno, Theodor W., 1970 & Adorno, Theodor W., 1997)
In this respect, though, it is imprtant to note that Adorno is also totally opposed to historical relativism. This means that though art can be successful, or unsuccessful, in a certain place and time, and therefore fulfil the process of art, this judgement is never final: “The interdependence of quality and history should not be conceived according to the stubborn cliché of a crude history of ideas that insists that history is the court that determines quality. This wisdom is a historiphilosophical rationalization of its own inadequeacy, as if no judgement were possible in the here and now.” (italics mine) The judgement of the quality, and thus the status, of artworks is always under re-examination, and success at one time does not neccessarily entail a continuation into the future. (Adorno, Theodor W., 1970 & Adorno, Theodor W., 1997)
As the status of artworks, according to Adorno, is coupled with their quality/dynamic effect, whether or not we consider them as importand for scrutiny, as artwork, is dependent on this. This, according to Adorno, also means that we can consider as artworks, documents that have up-till-now not been considered as such. Adorno's formulation of art is anti-nominative, nothing becomes art 'just becouse I say so', but under scrutiny some object not generally treated as art may prove to be important as such. Adorno, for instance, opposes Benjamin in this respect: “The distinction urged by Benjamin between the artwork and the document holds good insofar as it rejects works that are not in themselves determined by the law of form; many works, however, are objectively artworks even when they do not present themselves as art.” He consideres the 'Documenta' exhibitions at that time very improtant in this respect, installing mere documents and exhibiting their importance as artworks. (It would be interesting, later, to discuss the program and premises of the present Documenta from this point of view.) So, artwork is always in the process of becoming, in relations with other artworks, and with discursive practises around art, where even it's status as artwork is under constant critique (and where esteemed work can lose it's status and un-known artworks become such). (Adorno, Theodor W., 1970 & Adorno, Theodor W., 1997)
Text written for an exhibition catalogue for Hildur Bjarnadóttir in 2007.