What is the enigma of art?

Question

I've always been fascinated by the following constellated section of Adorno's Aesthetic Theory, probably because phenomenology is intuitively easier to get to grips with than a drawn out critical theory of an artwork.

Maybe this is more about the limits of phenomenology than a very useful way to explicate what the "enigma" of art is. But:

• does this (I think) need to keep thinking through art, tell us anything about what the enigma of art is: specifically, is it how the artwork can tell us about the (falsity of the) social whole?
• can the unfolding of the art work as social criticism ever come to a halt, either for an individual, or as a tendency within art? i.e. can there be a termination of further enlightenment to come, either from future art or criticism.

Answer 1

To answer the latter question, an artwork that is still alive does not terminate this social criticism.

The critique of freedom in society will be present when the universal and particular yawn apart - and all autonomous artworks thus engage in this criticism. In another part of Aesthetic Theory, Adorno claims that art would cease if historical suffering had never taken place.

So in other words, engaging in social critique constitutive of art's utopian character in that it looks for what is better - for the promise of reconciliation. The constant "thinking through" keeps the dialectic going - it does not result in the closure of the dialectic through a positive identity.

The former question is a little bit more difficult. This thinking through does tell us more about the enigma.

The German translation of enigma in aesthetic theory is puzzle. So this thinking through without reaching a determinate end is a disposition of the enigma. The second part - telling us about the falsity of the social whole - I am not so sure of.

His critique of phenomenology in this passage does show his problem with having complete knowledge of the artwork. The artwork, in being enigmatic cannot be completely grasped. You could say that since the enigma rejects conceptualisation, that art refuses to be subsumed by an idealistic philosophy, and thus, critiques its totalitarian character.

Answer 2

"It brings thinking experience to a halt."
This is the point, as best I know, of art: the experience called Aporia:

a logical impasse or contradiction especially : a radical contradiction in the import of a text or theory that is seen in deconstruction as inevitable. (Merriam-Webster definition)

Most of human experience is simply not amenable to rational / discursive thought. I hope I don't need a reference to support that assertion. You can't think logically about simple experiences like taste or smell, yet they can rouse very deep responses of memory or feeling. There is no way to rationally defend practices of dance, pottery, poetry, music or visual arts. To try is to come to an impasse as surely as trying to describe a flavor to someone who has never tasted that thing. Why bother?

Art is not simply an experience, even to a casual observer, because it is a made thing, not just a flavor or noise. So we want to understand what is behind it. But that would be like wanting to know why someone is happy, or wistful, or why they cry when listening to a particular piece of music, even for the hundredth time. Art is not about discussion, social criticism (except in a very obvious way) or any other thing than some one person's individual experience which they wanted to convey in a non-verbal and non-rational way.

Who would try to then apply tools of reason or words to that? Only a very deluded person.