prohibitions

“Stendhal’s dictum of art as the promesse du bonheur implies that art does its part for existence by accentuating what in it prefigures utopia. But this utopian element decreases, while existence more and more becomes merely the same as itself. Consequently, art is ever less able to make itself like existence. Because all happiness in existence is ersatz and false, art must break its promise in order to stay true to it.”

“In the false world all pleasure (ηδονή) is false. For the sake of happiness, happiness is renounced. It is thus that desire survives in art.”

Theodor W. Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie, 1970