Full Description
Pop art has traditionally been the most visible visual art within popular culture because its main transgression is easy to understand: the infiltration of the "low" into the "high". The same cannot be said of contemporary art of the 21st century, where the term "Gaga Aesthetics" characterizes the condition of popular culture being extensively imbricated in high culture, and vice-versa.
Taking Adorno and Horkheimer's "The Culture Industry" and Adorno's Aesthetic Theory as key touchstones, this book explores the dialectic of high and low that forms the foundation of Adornian aesthetics and the extent to which it still applied, and the extent to which it has radically shifted, thereby 'upending tradition'. In the tradition of philosophical aesthetics that Adorno began with Lukács, this explores the ever-urgent notion that high culture has become deeply enmeshed with popular culture. This is "Gaga Aesthetics": aesthetics that no longer follows clear fields of activity, where "fine art" is but one area of critical activity. Indeed, Adorno's concepts of alienation and the tragic, which inform his reading of the modernist experiment, are now no longer confined to art. Rather, stirring examples can be found in phenomena such as fashion and music video. In addition to dealing with Lady Gaga herself, this book traverses examples ranging from Madonna's Madam X to Moschino and Vetements, to deliberate on the strategies of subversion in the culture industry.
Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Culture and the Up-Ending of Tradition
2. Hegel, Art and Adequation
3. Adorno, The Constriction of the Aesthetic and Difficult Art
4. Modern Music and the Pact with the Devil
5. At the Precipice of Pop Culture: Wagner and Mahler
6. Art Beyond the Horizon
7. The Culture Industry and Popular Culture
8. Light Music and Lazy Listening
9. Jazz and "Jazz"
10. Ugliness and Kitsch
11. Aesthetics of Alienation
12. "Fashion Theory": A Philosophy of Dress
13. Lady Gaga's Gaga Aesthetics
14. Madonna to the Power of X
15. Fashion and the Redeployment of Kitsch
16. Philosophy in Fabric: Deconstruction in Contemporary Fashion
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
