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PRAXIS OF THE SOVIET AVANT-GARDE
LEAH HASDAN

In the Dialectic of Enlightenment, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno discuss how the culture industry is backed by a noncommittal vagueness of ideology,
which, in turn, influences the production of art. Horkheimer and Adorno argue that,
like the culture industry1, art is bound to its struggle with tradition and is unable
to transcend a new reality—or give way to a new cultural identity. The authors
look towards autonomous art, recognized in the presentation of the avant-garde,
to transcend the milieu of the culture industry. Yet, as they argue, “the claims of art
are always also ideology”2—this holds especially true for avant-garde art. Even in the
midst of society’s attempting to sever itself from tradition (in hopes of striving for a
new identity), avant-garde art does not transcend reality, for it is nonetheless backed
by the instrumentalization of ideology and places the artist’s identity into crisis.

Art is understood as the presentation of truth claims that reveal the current condition
of the social order. Horkheimer and Adorno argue that art is able to transcend reality
when it breaks from its tradition or its style; however, style is shaped by tradition,

1 “The culture industry has abolished the rubbish of former times by imposing its own perfection, by prohibiting
and domesticating dilettantism, while itself incessantly commiting the blunders without which the elevated style
cannot be conceived” Adorno, Theodor W, Max Horkheimer, and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. 2009. Dialectic Of
Enlightenment. 1st ed. Stanford, Calif: Stanford Univ. Press. 108.

2 Adorno, Theodor W, Max Horkheimer, and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. 2009. Dialectic Of Enlightenment. 1st ed.
Stanford, Calif: Stanford Univ. Press. 103.

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Praxis of the Soviet Avant-Garde

and a work of art can only break from its tradition when it has developed a new
style. In order for a work of art to develop a new style—to break from tradition and
transcend reality—it must expose itself to the failures of culture. Yet, if a work of art
does not expose itself to the “necessary failure of the passionate striving for identity”
that marks the discrepancy between tradition and style, then the work of art reverts
to immanence, relying on its similarity to others, which marks, for Horkheimer
and Adorno, the “surrogate of identity.” If art fails to diverge3 from its style, then it
submits to the “obedience of the social hierarchy.”4

If art is the presentation of truth claims that expose the condition of the social order,
then it is always ideology if it does not contest the social hierarchy. Therefore, good
art, determined by “what the Expressionists and Dadaists attacked in their polemics,
the untruth of style as such,”5 is that which contests its own cultural identity. In
order for art to challenge its identity, or break from its tradition, it calls for artists
to develop their own style. The greatest artists, then, according to Horkheimer and
Adorno, are “those who adopted style as a rigor to set against the chaotic expression
of suffering, as a negative truth.”6 A good artist is one who indirectly communicates
suffering by means of inducing a pleasurable, moving experience. An artist with good
style indirectly develops his style by means of contesting the guise, absence, or lack of
presentation, of suffering. Therefore, in the realization of his style, developed out of
the artwork itself, the artist does not obey the social hierarchy, but always challenges
its claim to truth.

In this notion, we recognize revolution. The Soviet Avant-Garde movement is one of
the best examples of artists’ demanding a change in the social hierarchy and producing
work that embodies the experience of suffering. The newly revolutionized Soviet state,
however, invariantly politicized the artistic Avant-Garde movement of its time: it
enforced the ideology of the revolution—through a scientific method of organization
at its forefront—where the venerated reality of the revolution remained trapped
by the instrumentalization of its own ideology. For the Constructivist movement
in particular, this meant abandoning all a priori conceptions and iconographical
elements to investigate the metaphysical contradiction between building materials.

The Constructivists sought harmony in the least amount of excess necessary for
construction. Perhaps this is best recognized in Aleksandr Rodchenko’s Oval
Hanging Construction No. 12 (1920), which was constructed out of a single sheet of
plywood. This deductive structure was then coated with aluminum, cut into various

3 Although the authors use “divulge” in the initial text to argue that the culture industry exposes style as
conformity, “[the culture industry] being nothing other than style, it divulges style’s secret: obedience to the
social hierarchy,” they are really stressing that style must break from culture if art is to transcend reality (Adorno,
Horkheimer and Schmid Noerr 2009).

4 Adorno, Theodor W, Max Horkheimer, and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. 2009. Dialectic Of Enlightenment. 1st ed.
Stanford, Calif: Stanford Univ. Press.103-104.

5 Adorno, Horkheimer and Schmid Noerr 2009
6 Adorno, Horkheimer and Schmid Noerr 2009

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

concentric geometric shapes, and positioned in such a manner to form a geometric
three-dimensional volume that would plicate into its original planar condition. The
Oval Hanging Construction demonstrated a pedagogical directness by showcasing its
bare process of production. This method of construction implements a dialectical
approach to the integrity of the materials by posing a contradiction to the identity
of the transient art object: the construction, or the art object, therefore operates as a
motivated sign, whereby its composition is arbitrarily limited by its relationship to its
materials. Whereas a composition is merely arbitrary, the Constructivist’s art objects
are motivated by its integrity of material, and by the least amount of excess necessary
for its construction.7

Operating as a motivated sign, the constructions ultimately stress the discontinuities
in temporal and spatial elements of experience, also introducing the artist’s work as
an intervention towards the social practice of mass cultural representation.8 Yet, this
intervention of mass cultural representation is precisely what is at stake here. The
Constructivist’s pedagogical directness did not contest mass cultural representation;
rather, they used it as a means to re-constitute a collective identity. Mediating
the transcendence of a new identity by embodying the power of mass cultural
representation, the Constructivists dismissed the authentic experience of the viewer,
which establishes the validity of the art object. The Constructivist’s logical method
of production induces an absence or loss of experience for the viewer, such that the
artist imposes a manufactured reality onto the art object—leaving no room for the
viewer to authentically reflect and establish a connection to the art object.

The loss of experience, according to Adorno, occurs when ideology or preconceived,
a priori concepts mediate the essential moment of objectivity. The essential moment
of objectivity occurs when the object or thing-in-itself is not falsified by mediated
concepts; the object must be experienced for what it is as intention recta9, and must
“prove itself in that it qualitatively alters the opinions of reified consciousness.”10
The viewer’s loss of experience is recognized in the Oval Hanging Construction’s
discontinuities in temporal and spatial elements of experience. The Oval Hanging
Construction denies the possibility of an essential moment of objectivity because
it cannot disentangle its temporal and spatial elements of experience from the
ideological framework in which its very form and materiality are constituted.
Therefore, the Oval Hanging Construction cannot be considered a thing-in-itself
outside of its ideological framework. As such, the Oval Hanging Construction is
arbitrarily limited as a motivated sign. In its demonstration of the least amount of

7 Foster, Hal. Art since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism. 2nd ed. Vol. 184.
8 Foster, Hal. Art since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. New York: Thames &

Hudson, 2004. Print. 183.
9 The state of consciousness which focuses upon the true object, rather than on an image of the object within the

intellect.
10 Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund, Henry W Pickford, and Lydia Goehr. 1998. Critical Models. 1st ed. New York:

Columbia University Press. 252.

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Praxis of the Soviet Avant-Garde

excess of materials, the Oval Hanging Construction holds captive the experiential
reality of production by staying true to its representation of efficiency. The viewer’s
experience of the deductive materiality in the Oval Hanging Construction is entirely
mediated by the motivation—the interjection of ideology on behalf of the artist.
Presenting its ability to be reverted into its original planar condition, the thing-in-
itself is robbed of its essential moment of objectivity, for it is only suggestive of a fixed
manufactured experience and cannot be recognized as such—as its true object. Yet
what guides the residual notion of objectivity it not necessarily the thing-in-itself, but
rather something man-made entirely:

[I]t is the model of the profit that remains on the balance sheet after all
production costs have been deducted. Profit, however, is subjective interest
limited and reduced to the form of calculation. What counts for the
sober matter-of-factness of profit thinking is anything but the matter: it
disappears into the return it yields.11

The subjective viewer’s interest towards the art object reflects what is common to
the community and its forms of visibility, thereby marking the residual notion of
objectivity within the capitalist framework. The basic level of production suggests
that subjective interest does not recite quantifiable value, whereas in a heightened
sense of production (induced by the capitalism system), subjective interest obtains a
relationship to the quantifiable value of the profit-gain return model.

The quantifiable abstract value inherent to capitalism demands the subject to regard
the world with an interest that is fundamentally quantitative. Something may be
valued, such as the Oval Hanging Construction, the viewer’s experience is in fact
mediated by the capitalist profit-thinking: fundamentally quantitative mentality.
It is not so much that the viewer looks towards the art object as a literal form of
quantifiable value; rather, it is that the viewer enters an organized method of social
programming—that of the capitalist regime—where he forfeits the spontaneity of
his or her own contemplation for the sake of a quantifiable, tangible operation of
contemplation where “ideology […] makes life initially easier for the spectators.”12

In the same sense that the art object is trapped by the predetermined framework of its
own ideology, the experience of the art object as such is set up in advance to determine
the viewer’s experiences as nothing but the culture industry’s object, which is to view
the art object as a cyclical invariant of the production.13 In this sense, the loss of
experience is predicated on the notion of “the ideal of depersonalizing knowledge

11 Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund, Henry W Pickford, and Lydia Goehr. 1998. Critical Models. 1st ed. New York:
Columbia University Press. 253.

12 Adorno, Theodor W, Max Horkheimer, and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. 2009. Dialectic Of Enlightenment. 1st ed.
Stanford, Calif: Stanford Univ. Press. 117.

13 Adorno, Theodor W, Max Horkheimer, and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. 2009. Dialectic Of Enlightenment. 1st ed.
Stanford, Calif: Stanford Univ. Press. 113.

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

for the sake of objectivity.”14 The loss of experience occurs when ideology determines
thinking for us. When the essential moment of objectivity for the construction falls
prey to mediated a priori concepts, the separation between theory and praxis emerges
in the loss of experience and knowledge.

Perhaps the Constructivists developed a new style at best. If reinforcing ideology
by giving it aesthetic form can been regarded as style, then their art objects alluded
to the idealized transparency of the political state. It is clear that Rodchenko’s Oval
Hanging Construction presents theory in operation: his construction lays bare the
process of production and calls the experience of efficiency into question for the
viewer. However, if thinking is a form of doing; and theory is a form of praxis,15 then
is the articulation of theory successful here?

Both the art object and the viewer exist within a revolutionary moment of passionate
striving for a new cultural identity. If the construction is a motivated sign, does the
Oval Hanging Construction confront challenges of production? The failure to do so
strikes the revolutionary moment as incomplete, for the viewer enters the artistic
space in search for a direction, anticipating an answer to the revolutionary call.
Yet the viewer operates under the profit-thinking model that renders them docile,
forfeiting the spontaneity of their own contemplation for the ideology presented
before them. The articulation of theory is quite relevant here, for if the viewer is
confronted with a ready-made cliché defined by the cultural schema within which it
operates, then to what extent does cliché answer the revolutionary call by suspending
a sense of reflection within the viewer? Does theory carry out its goal in the Oval
Hanging Construction if the construction reinforces the hierarchical representation of
production rather than posit a form of alterity?

The Constructivists’ pedagogical directness demonstrates a loss of experience that
is necessary to prologue the revolutionary fervor for both artist and viewer. The
revolutionary experience sparks the guiding ideology of the revolution is extinguished
when every phase of artistic production and choice of material is planned. This loss of
revolutionary experience isolates theory from its praxis by collapsing the distinction
between the artwork and its message:

What since then has been called the problem of praxis and today culminates
in the question of the relation between theory and praxis coincides with
the loss of experience caused by the rationality of the eternally same. Where
experience is blocked or altogether absent, praxis is damaged and therefore
longed for, distorted, and desperately overvalued. Thus what is called the

14 Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund, Henry W Pickford, and Lydia Goehr. 1998. Critical Models. 1st ed. New York:
Columbia University Press. 253.

15 “A consciousness of theory and praxis must be produced that neither divides the two such that theory becomes
powerless and praxis becomes arbitrary […] thinking is a doing, theory a form of praxis.” Adorno, Theodor
Wiesengrund, Henry W Pickford, and Lydia Goehr. 1998. Critical Models. 1st ed. New York: Columbia
University Press. 261.

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Praxis of the Soviet Avant-Garde

problem of praxis is interwoven with the problem of knowledge. Abstract
subjectivity, in which the process of rationalization terminates, strictly
speaking can do just as little as the transcendental subject can conceivably
have precisely what it is attested to have: spontaneity.16

What induces the artist’s disconnect from the spontaneity of the revolutionary
experience is his preconceived commitment to the artistic material, precisely because
the construction is a motivated sign, where the form of the art object communicates
a truth limited in its interpretation. The art objects obey the social hierarchy by
presenting truth claims that have been manufactured by the politicization of the
state.

The separation of theory from praxis is most evident in Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument
to the Third International (1920). Originally crafted in wood within a scale of 18
to 22 feet, the finished monument was intended to be a 1300-foot metal-and-glass
sculpture (which, at the time, would have surpassed the world’s tallest building [the
Eiffel Tower] by one third) that aimed to embody the new ethos of the Revolution.
Tatlin’s celebrated design consisted in two dovetailing conical spirals contained
within a web of oblique and vertical slats, which framed four geometric glass volumes
stacked on top of each other within the structure’s slanted core.

The four glass volumes were intended to rotate at specific paces—each representing
a branch of the Comintern, or the Soviet organization in charge of spreading the
revolution abroad. The revolution regarded with the slowest pace was the largest
volume, symbolizing the International’s “legislative assemblies,” intended to rotate
for the length of a year. The second volume would house the executive branch and
rotate for a month; the next volume, the propaganda services, would take a day;
the uppermost volume was added as a late edition to the project and would have
presumably lasted an hour.17

A construction built off of the cyclical rigid invariants developed out of the social
disorder of the revolution, Tatlin’s art object presents a harmony that was guaranteed
in advance. Intended to rebel against the cultural complacency left over from the
monarchical tradition, the material form of Tatlin’s construction quite literally obeys
its own hierarchy in the new Soviet order. Although there were several arguments
made in favor of the production, Tatlin’s design was never realized. He failed to
justify his formal use of a spiral, and its appeal to an age-old iconography, reducing
his construction to a cultural, traditional invariant of the same. The Working Group
of Objective Analysis, established by Rodchenko, regarded Tatlin’s monument as a
fetishization of artistic production—a romantic affair: “by a lone artist in the secrecy
of his studio and with the traditional tools of his craft; its formal organization

16 Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund, Henry W Pickford, and Lydia Goehr. 1998. Critical Models. 1st ed. New York:
Columbia University Press. 260.

17 Foster et. al 2004 p.183

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

remained an indecipherable secret that reeked of ‘bourgeois individualism’: it was
not a construction but an authorial composition.” 18

Through his logical method of production, Tatlin isolated himself, as well as his
work, from the Constructivist community precisely because he was detached from
the theory of the revolutionary fervor. The unembroidered material representation of
the Soviet social hierarchy in the Monument to the Third International destroys any
opportunity for the essential moment of objectivity because the construct cannot be
viewed as anything other than its literal representation. The absence of spontaneity in
Tatlin’s artistic processes, the concrete memorialization of a suffering void of actually
inducing a moving, reflective experience for the viewer, demonstrates his inability to
articulate theory and therefore isolates praxis altogether.

The absence—or loss—of an experience that may stimulate reflection and generate
knowledge, rooted in the complacency of profit-thinking, constitutes the artist’s
failure to incite an authentic connection with his work: “the lack of self-reflection
[…] is the mark of a praxis that, having become its own fetish, becomes a barricade
to its own goal.”19 In the attempt to respond to the call of the revolutionary fervor—
to strive for a new cultural identity—the Constructivist movement organized its
revolutionary theory within the efficiency of production. Initially emerging out of the
platform of autonomous art, the Constructivist movement should have challenged
itself, contested the social order, and promoted a social alterity. Since it failed to
stay true to its roots, it did not produce works of art that challenged themselves or
instigated spontaneous reflection necessary to carry out its own goal. The art object
should not answer a call to what should be done, but present an aesthetic experience
that gives space for critique.

Though the Constructivist movement did not succeed in its autonomous intent, such
failure does not exist because of theory’s failure to prescribe praxis. The distinction
between theory and praxis does not suggest a temporal continuity: “the relationship
between theory and practice after both have once distanced themselves from each
other is that of qualitative reversal, not transition, and surely not subordination.”
20The disenchantment of the Constructivist movement is due to the loss of identity
on behalf of the artist. Trapped by the constraints of ideology, the Soviet Avant-Garde
artist did not successfully critique his tradition, and therefore lacked a presentation
of style such that it ultimately failed to induce an aesthetic experience that would
promote the passionate striving for an alterity, or a new cultural identity.

18 Foster, Hal. Art since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. New York: Thames &
Hudson, 2004. Print. 182.

19 Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund, Henry W Pickford, and Lydia Goehr. 1998. Critical Models. 1st ed. New York:
Columbia University Press. 262.

20 Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund, Henry W Pickford, and Lydia Goehr. 1998. Critical Models. 1st ed. New York:
Columbia University Press. 277.

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Praxis of the Soviet Avant-Garde

Theodor Adorno specifies that successful action arises out of engaging in the art of
critique. Addressing the oscillation between theory and praxis yields the spontaneity
of imagination, which presents the possibility for change. In this respect, Adorno
believes that art should be autonomous. Insofar as art compels change through the
dialectical approach of critique, “art is the critique of praxis as unfreedom; this is
where the truth begins.”21 Moreover, Adorno mentions that praxis embodies a sincere
and intense conviction, which is broken when praxis liberates itself out from the
interplay between the sensuous and the rational movements of the intellect, which
are expressed in Friedrich Schiller’s play drive. 22

It is true, nonetheless, that Schiller proposes if man were to achieve change successfully,
then “he will have to approach it through the problem of the aesthetic, because it is
only through beauty that man makes his way to freedom.” 23 In order for theory and
praxis to succeed—for the interplay between the sensuous and rational to remain in
balance—the artist must induce an aesthetic experience, which would stimulate the
inherent reflection—the spontaneity of imagination necessary for change. Because
the free play of the imagination mimics the intellect’s capacity to conceive of a
political alterity, Schiller calls for a historically situated intellectual reflection.

This is what makes Schiller’s system attractive to Adorno: the fact that Schiller
diagnoses his historical moment, and attributes its corrective task to an aesthetic
experience, incites freedom’s capacity to keep itself in check through the active
interplay of the imagination. The dialectical procedure of the aesthetic experience,
developed out of the sensual, instigates the imagination to posit an alterity that may
then be grounded and articulated in a reasonable local manner that tailors the current
condition of the social order. Schiller’s system offers a similar operation of theory and
praxis in the sense that freedom induced by reflection is not removed from its actual
practice: rather, it opens up a space to critique, to preserve intention, and to give way
to a proper form of practical freedom.

What remains of interest here is that Schiller emphasizes a critique of the historical
moment, where his response to the revolutionary call stands in accordance with an
aesthetic self-reflection, and where the viewer is able to generate knowledge and
earnestly partake in a form of praxis. In respect to Soviet Avant-Garde art, praxis was
isolated from theory when the artist produced constructions that preserved the Soviet
identity by trapping representation in material form, as opposed to producing works
of art aimed at inciting spontaneous reflection—which would develop a space for
critique and the production of knowledge.

21 Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund, Henry W Pickford, and Lydia Goehr. 1998. Critical Models. 1st ed. New York:
Columbia University Press. 262.

22 Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund, Henry W Pickford, and Lydia Goehr. 1998. Critical Models. 1st ed. New York:
Columbia University Press. 262.

23 Schiller, Friedrich von, Walter Hinderer, and Daniel O Dahlstrom. 2005. Essays. New York: Continuum. 90.

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

It is as if the Soviet artist conceived of himself as a mere agent of ideology, solving the
historical moment through its preservation, executed via efficient assembly. What is
there to be said about the lack of self-reflection, perhaps on the part of the artist, in the
ever-changing contextual moment? We may come to recognize that the transparency
of the artist’s pedagogical directness reveals a silencing on the artist’s part—sacrificing
the identity of his own narrative to present the logic of collective assembly. Yet, in the
historical moment of striving for a new identity, the logical method of organization
lays bare the complacency of profit-thinking where the artist is only valued based on
the efficiency of his assembly. The Soviet artist cannot but help face isolation as he
anticipates losing true value in his commitment to rigid ideology:

…in the eyes of those who nourished the all too abstract and illusory
hope for a total transformation might have appeared justified—that is,
violence—after the experience of the National Socialist and Stalinist
atrocities and in the face of the longevity of totalitarian repression is
inextricably imbricated in what needs to be transformed […] Whoever
does not make the transition to irrational and brutal violence sees himself
forced into the vicinity of the reformism that for its part shares the guilt
for perpetuation the deplorable totality […] Dialectic is perverted into
sophistry as soon as it focuses pragmatically on the next step, beyond
which the knowledge of the totality has long since moved.24

Although the Constructivist movement may be read as a call for order in the
lingering moment of revolutionary fervor, the crisp delineation of geometric lines
erects borders around empty space, which operate as mere frames that hug an
unknown, undefined territory. If the art objects of the Constructivist movement were
to bear meaning outside of their initial ideology, they would be seen as memorials
to the insecure struggle, and collective loss of identity. In his logical presentation of
material, the Soviet artist bears witness to the violent nihilism of constructing value
out of mechanical assembly.

Insofar as theory is a form of praxis (“if thinking bears on anything of importance,
then it initiates a practical impulse, no matter how hidden that impulse may
remain to thinking” 25), then the artistic vision and its aesthetic experience are also
productive. Schiller believes that the practical impulse in the artistic process depends
on the artist’s handling of the subject matter—specifically that the artist obtains the
power to manipulate form so that it may destroy and consume material. The more
seductive the material appears in itself, “the more it seeks to impose itself upon us,
the more high-handedly it thrusts itself forward with effects of its own.”26 Artistic
production, according to Schiller, carries with it the capacity to transform, destroy,

24 Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund, Henry W Pickford, and Lydia Goehr. 1998. Critical Models. 1st ed. New York:
Columbia University Press. 268.

25 Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund, Henry W Pickford, and Lydia Goehr. 1998. Critical Models. 1st ed. New York:
Columbia University Press. 264.

26 Schiller, Friedrich von, Walter Hinderer, and Daniel O Dahlstrom. 2005. Essays. New York: Continuum.151.

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Praxis of the Soviet Avant-Garde

and give shape to materials based on our susceptibility to its sensuousness. This
process of production is precisely how The Working Group of Objective Analysis
constituted Tatlin’s romantic affair in the secrecy of his own studio: “in contrast with
the bourgeois artist’s studio secrets, the sculpture’s ‘logical’ mode of production and
deductive structure where heralded as a means of opposing the fetishization of artistic
production.”27

However, the logical mode of production lacks the susceptibility to sensuous
materiality present in Schiller’s system, and the aesthetic experience altogether. The
material appears sensuous through artistic production: the artist realizes his artistic
vision through the process of destroying material—of giving it form. Through this
process of creation, the art object appears sensual because it serves as a vestige of this
artistic consciousness. The viewer seduced by the sensuousness of material because
artistic production has rendered it as a presentation of the artists’ consciousness: the
material now embodies an inductive experience that validates the existential existence
of the viewer.

It is the viewer’s experience of recognizing the power of the gaze that reflects the
violence of artistic production back to itself. The viewer is receptive to the art object’s
raw material. With the power of the art object’s gaze, the viewer must destroy
its aesthetic organization, for reflection causes the viewer to examine and dissect
forms of detail, dismantling the visual. However, Adorno mentions that the Soviet
artist, through his violence—in enforcing the pragmatic direction of reformism
and in moments where Constructivist art merely reverts to industry of pedagogical
directness—creates an impositional alterity that severs their art from its autonomous
roots. A manufactured experience that links alterity with a dependency on ideology,
“a work of art, which expresses intelligence more than anything else, can never strike
us as noble, any more than it is beautiful, since it emphasizes a relation of dependence
(which is inseparable from purposefulness) instead of concealing it.”28 F

27 Foster, Hal. Art since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. New York: Thames &
Hudson, 2004. Print. 184.

28 Schiller, Friedrich von, Walter Hinderer, and Daniel O Dahlstrom. 2005. Essays. New York: Continuum. 155.

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adorno, Theodor W, Max Horkheimer, and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. 2009. Dialectic
Of Enlightenment. 1st ed. Stanford, Calif: Stanford Univ. Press.

Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund, Henry W Pickford, and Lydia Goehr. 1998. Critical
Models. 1st ed. New York: Columbia University Press.

Foster, Hal. Art since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism. 2nd ed.
Vol. 1. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2004. Print.

Schiller, Friedrich von, Walter Hinderer, and Daniel O Dahlstrom. 2005. Essays.
New York: Continuum.