Subject and Object: Adorno

https://frankfurtschool.wordpress.com/2008/02/12/class-summarysubject-and-object-by-theodor-adorno/
Below is a summary of the class discussion we had on both Wednesday of
last week and this past Monday. Please feel free to add any questions and
comments that you might have!
In Subject and Object, Theodor Adorno discusses the relationship between
subject and object and questions the real and the illusory elements within
that relationship. What becomes real lies in regards to the face that we (as
subjects) have a private life; the experience of our inner life (wherein lies
the subject and object distinction) is taken as pure. However, Adorno makes
it clear that that separation is illusory. Here then, what we mean when we
say subject, becomes complicated. At the same time that we are subjects
we are objects in the world as well. Grammatically speaking, if one were to
say I take a drink, the I is the subject. To replace the I with a Me, the
I becomes an object. To this extent, subject and object are completely
intertwined with each other. Subjectivity is not a subject, it is an object as
well and the subject is then of and a part of the world at large.
Adorno continues and explains that due to this subject/object relationship,
man as a human being is a result, not an eidos (essencesee pg. 511). For
Adorno, we (human beings, subjects and objects) are a result of the
intertwining of society at every level (language, culture, art, etc.).
Language, for example, does not come from us; we did not invent language
as such, we absorb the words for our subjectivityit does not grow out of
it. To this extent then, language makes us a result of the world because it
does not come from us only. Further, this only further exemplifies the
relationship between subject and object, but more importantly it highlights
how the separation between the two is illusory.
The subject is empty without an object. When reflecting upon ones own
subjectivity, when asking what am I doing?you are making yourself into
an object for yourself (the subject) to study: for Adorno, your subject has
an object. No matter how deeply we retreat into the subject, there is an
object. Adorno wants to build a distinction between the idealism behind

subjectivity and its active state. He draws away from the idealism of being
wrapped up in ourselves, of objects having a meaning apart from our
subjectivity. The very meaning of the object, for Adorno, is tied to our
subjectivity. If there is an object without meaning, then the subject has no
meaning. The act of naming in and of itself brings up this intertwinement of
subject and object: What is this? brings objectivity into subjectivity.
What makes something meaningful and how it becomes meaningful is all
tied into this subject/object relationship. Our very being as humanshow
we think, know and areis inseparable from history. Our knowing and being
(elements of a pure subjectivity) are inseparable from history (objects). To
this same degree, in the attempt to understand who I am, it turns me back
to the world (society/culture) of which I am intertwined. They are a product
of history: they are reproduced to such a degree that to ask Who am I? is
inseparable from What is the meaning of historical experience?
This moment in Adornos piece reflects back to the relationship between
historical materialism and historicism which comes about in Walter
Benjamins Theses on the Philosophy of History. When Adorno explains
that man is a result, not an eidos, the question emerges: Are we
barbarism itself, since we (as subjects and objects) are a part of history?
History makes it possible to see the barbarism in who we really are as
subjects and objects, but what does it really matter? Why would it matter?
Why not look at cultural treasures as just treasures? Why not stay blind to
history as a mound of wreckage upon wreckage. If the angel of history is
telling the truth of history, of being blown away by the wreckage of
progress, then why would it matter to look upon it in the first place? We
become the products of the catastrophe. But were would we be without it
since its part of our being and the distinction between subject and object is
all but illusory? Are we doomed to be part of the wreckage? Or is there a
way out?
There is a complex relationship to the past in regards to what Adorno sees
as the barbarism of everyday life. It is easy to forget how much the subject
is an object at the same time. The relationship between subject and object
allows for each entity to reflect and influence the other; in the same way

that one would say I am using a pen, you can reverse it and say The pen
is using me at the same time. There is barbarism in objectivity and there is
barbarism in subjectivity: but how does this obligate me? How am I made
responsible towards the catastrophe of history? Of which shapes my
subjectivity and objectivity? If this relationship is one where there can never
truly be a distinction between either entity, then what does it mean and
what does it matter?
Key passages:
The

distinction

between

subject

and

object

is

both

real

and

illusory(Adorno, 498).
The object, too, is mediated; but according to its own concept, it is not so
thoroughly dependent on the subject as the subject is on objectivity.
Idealism

has

ignored

such

differences

and

has

thus

coarsened

spiritualization that serves abstraction as a disguise. Yet this occasions a

revision of the stand toward the subject which prevails in traditional theory.
That

theory

glorifies

the

subject

in

ideology

and

slanders

it

in

epistemological practice. If one wants to reach the object, on the other

hand, its subjective attributes or qualities are not to be eliminated, for
precisely that would run counter to the primacy of the object. If the subject
does have an objective core, the objects subjective qualities are so much
more an element of objectivity (Adorno, 502).
The a priori and society are intertwined. The universality and necessity of
those forms, their Kantian glory, is none other than that which unites
mankind. It needed them to survive. Captivity is internalized; the individual
is no less imprisoned in himself that in the universal, in society. Hence the
interest in the reinterpretation of captivity as freedom. The categorical
captivity of individual consciousness repeats the real captivity of every
individual (Adorno, 504-505).
Man is a result, not an eidos(Adorno, 511).

What You See is What You See: Constructing the Subject-Object

Aaron Davis
http://www.artandeducation.net/paper/what-you-see-is-what-you-seeconstructing-the-subject-object/

In his 1998 essay, Art and Objecthood Michael Fried mounts a critique of
Minimalist (Literalist by his account) Art suggesting that it amounts to
nothing more than an abstraction of theatricality that marks both the death
(or suspension) of subjectivity as he sees it. Further, he argues that
Literalism also provides a nemesis that Modern painting and sculpture must
defeat so that verisimilitude as he sees it, may prevail. [1]While one must
certainly respect Mr. Frieds position as a noted critic, his attack is misplaced
in its paradox of juxtaposing bombastic presentation with intellectual rigor,
parading the former as the latter. His observations on the work itself
constitute an acute and comprehensive grasp of the singular cultural shape
of the work, defined particularly by the role of art in popular culture, while
his ability to understand form as Literalist art presents it, is conspicuously
absent. Frieds critique is leveled at Donald Judd and Robert Morris by
example, and it is through a close reading of JuddsSpecific Objects that an
argument can be made not only in praise of Literalist work, but will also
reveal that such work offers an escape from the didactic relationship
subject-object relationship that plagues modern perceptions of space. The
Specific Object offers an autonomous definition and understanding of space
and material that has been prematurely abandoned in favor of the
spectacular technocratic notion of progress that has produced nothing
more than additional distractions, additional substitutions, and additional
theatres of complicity which further entrench us in a perception of reality
which is not our own. Instead, it ensures the things we see are consumed in
the way they are programmed to be. Judd offers an alternative; the way in
which we say is able to be manipulated to free us from constructed
meaning. In other words, if Michael Fried represents the desire to critique
things as consumable objects, and it is impossible to create a work which is

not consumable, how we consciously see (and that active sight is a choice)
is the most primitive, most forgotten, and most liberating act of autonomy.
Within this space, which all social constructions of meaning and value are
short circuited, the viewer becomes subject and object, and the work
therefore is present and absent, denying the viewer the satisfaction of
[their] vanity[2] and places the onus of deriving meaning squarely on
them, liberating the artist of the narrative and placing in crisis the existence
and need of meaning.
No Illusions. No Allusions.[3] With this, Donald Judd clears a path for
Literalist Art which is a rejection of the psychological and subjective realities
implicit in Modern European painting and sculpture. Three-dimensionality is
not as near being simply a container as painting and sculpture have seemed
to be, but it tends to that. But now painting and sculpture are less neutral,
less containers, more defined, not undeniable and unavoidable.[4] The
descriptions of his form of art, Specific Objects, exists not as a synthesis or
reimagining of these traditions but as a group of works, and more
importantly a way of working, that are generally defined in negative terms
in that they are neither paintings, as they are generally three-dimensional
and have volume, nor are they sculpture because they lack parts which
frees the work from both composition and effects as well as liberates the
work itself from traditional European allusions to the body.[5] Furthermore,
they locate the viewer, both the true subject and true object of the artwork
in the vacillating definition the work sets forth, in the same space as the
object. The new work sits directly on the floor or hung on the wall,
estranging the work from its traditional means of presentation, removing
the pedestal and distantiation which characterizes traditional sculpture (and
is interestingly enough the watermark of modern commercial control), and
projecting the painting off of the wall plane. By making what Fried calls the
literal shape[6] if the work clearly independent of the wall, refusing to
support it or be supported formally by it,

the work identifies with the

viewer, existing complicity though seemingly temporarily in the given space;

both estranged, both objects. Judd describes this point:

The one thing overpowers the earlier painting. It also establishes the
rectangle as a definite form; it is no longer a fairly neutral limit The
rectangular plane is given a life span. The simplicity required to emphasize
the rectangle limits the arrangements possible within it The plane is also
emphasized and nearly single. It is clearly a plane one or two inches in front
of another plane, the wall, and parallel to it. The relationship of the two
planes is specific; it is a form. Everything on or slightly in the plane must be
arranged laterally.[7]
This is the first time that the artwork is considered coextensive with the
medium which it is presented in and on. The art object then is bound by a
site in the same way that a work of architecture is and has the ability to
imply space outside of what is rendered on the surface. Fried fails to see
this synchronous relationship ( it is now synchronous in that the shape of
the canvas and the perception of it now exist in time.) He states, The
shape is the object; at any rate, what secures the wholeness of the object is
the singleness of the shape. It is, I believe, that emphasis on shape that
accounts for the impression, which numerous critics have mentioned, that
Judds and Morriss pieces are hollow.[8]
Precisely. It is in the hollowness that the work itself is manifest in its
projection and definition of space outside of itself. If the works were
themselves full, they would contain a subject beyond their boundaries and
therefore remain static in time and site. This leads to another critical point
which is missed by Fried et al. The works are not intended to be seen en
vaccua as objects to be contemplated, but it is their presence which
activates the space around them through their orientation and material.
Their identity as Specific Objects, no longer mere objects, in that their
effects are extensive, not intensive; subjective, not prescriptive. Were they
mere objects, then they would have no different effect in a trash bin than in
the Louvre.
Three dimensions are real space. That gets rid of the problem of illusionism
and of literal space, space in and around marks and colors.- which is
riddance of one of the salient and most objectionable relics of European art.
[9] Judd continues his critique by reintroducing the idea of Real Space in

opposition to Literal Space. Real space is the space in which the object and
the subject reside rather than the theatrical space the art object invites the
subject into. Sculpture fails this test as well because its composition of parts
does not allow it to be fully present and legible, denies it a level of
immediacy that Specific Objects operate within. Traditional sculpture also
establishes a figurative language of an object in space without ordering
space. Morris himself commented that unitary forms do not mark a
reduction of simplification of experience, but serve to order it in a more
cohesive manner shutting off any symbolic illusion and focus the subject
on purely formal ( read: real) issues of color, scale, volume, and the
surrounding space. This direction leads to a system which substitutes the
traditional questions of what to represent where with ideas of presence and
place its role changed from that of a transmitter of objective content to a
constructor of its own expressive grammar.[10]
This expression of the work as a thing expressing its inherent qualities
independent of outside influences is directly taken from Maurice MerleauPontys essay The Phenomenology of Perception, published in the US when
the Literalist sculptors were starting out. Pontys text quickly became a
seminal text in the formative period of the artists and was attractive
because it opposes the dualism which presents consciousness as interiority
and the body as a thing.[11] For him, human experience is not made up of
separate subjective and objective stimulus, but rather through a synthesis
of intelligent acts and emotional perceptions. As Gonzales points out, Thus
for Merleau-Ponty, the distance and the viewpoint are not added to the
object, but are an inherent part of its meaning. Judd criticizes this
separation of object and experience when he notes that abstract painting
before 1946 and most subsequent painting (most likely a critique of
Abstract Expressionism) there is a representational subordination of the
whole to its parts, emphasizing composition. Anthony Caro, whom Fried
lauds incessantly, also fails in Judds eyes and he compares it to
architectural referents. The difference, he notes, is like that between one of
Brunelleschis windows in the Badia di Fiesole and the faade of Palazzo
Rucellai, which is only an undeveloped rectangle as a whole and is mainly a
collection of highly ordered parts. [12]

Progressing in specificity, the material choices outlined by Judd represent

and

enrich

physically

his

formal

intentions.

Industrial

products

are

important to use because they do not have a precedent or variation of

production that make them ideologically weighted. Also, practically, they are
inexpensive

and

maintain

certain

unalterable

integrity

in

their

homogeneity of tone and treatment. In a way, they express a quality he

sees in Rothkos rectangles and Nolands circles (and later, Agnes Martin
would champion): the limitless perception of fields as having been apparent
sections cut from something infinitely larger.

[13]

This quality of the infinite

is present in the industrial materials. Judd sees this use of material as

aggressive and necessary for the identity of a specific object in its
objectivity based in a neutral inaccessible way. In other words, the coldness
and banality of the materials do not allow the viewer to identify the specific
object as an artwork based in material, They obviously arent art.[14] Fried
criticizes this execution of the work as theatrical because through the
inaccessibility of the material, the work demands the physical participation
of the viewer. Arguably, however, because the work lacks specific meaning
or prescribed frontality of viewing, as well as no distraction, no payoff, no
narrative, the work is not at all theatrical and does not need the viewer or
the gallery. If anything, the opposite is true. The work requires only space,
because it operates in producing new space from existing, and that new
space is nothing more than the estrangement of the space from itself.
Simply, the work is always working because it does not require anything to
work. The payoff Fried was looking for was the reality of the space he
was in. He was presented with nothing less than real space, in real time,
and was frustrated because there was no distraction that would prove to be
fodder for his standard methods of critique.
In this, Specific Objects posits the most exciting and dangerous premise,
and indeed the way out for art and architecture: art is nothing more than
space and composition, and composition is a conceit. Taken to its logical
end, painting is rendered as merely pigment on substrate; sculpture is the
pretense of form in mass. The meaning is what we, the viewers, have
projected to give it value beyond itself, the value of popular culture. This, I
believe, is why Fried cannot meet Judd on his own terms, and perhaps why

Judd et al were so brazen with their output; Literalist art proclaims

traditional arts irrelevance, thereby taking all of Frieds critical capacity
away from him. Or even more extreme, and brilliant, is that the critical
commentary, whether positive or negative, is a reinforcement of the very
principles outlined in the text. Implicit in Stellas famous adage What you
see is what you see, was the unspoken What you see is what you are able
to see, care to see, can see, are willing to see. Therefore, any praise or
attack on Literalist art was as neutral to the work as its formal gesture and
as powerful as the rhetorical clout of the critical voice; any commentary was
galvanizing. This is perhaps the most powerful effect of the work, its
transitive ability to exist outside of itself both in real space, and rhetorical
space.
Finally, the text itself is a model of the principles it outlines. Within the text
are images, none of which are intended to be Judds work. A photograph of
Judds Untitled (1963) is included but with an asterix and a note stating
The editor, not I, included the photo of my work.[15] To litter his text with
images of his own work would appear to let the ideas behind it remain
inclusive to a single practitioner and a single method. To the contrary, the
images are all of Specific Objects executed by other artists, again creating
the variance of subject object relationship and creating a space in front of
the page itself. As if describing the body of text itself, Judd states If there
is a reference, it is single and explicit. In any case the chief interests are
obvious.
When operative, Specific Objects clears the way for the critical eye to
remain critical. It requires the suspension and dissolution of any a
priori definition of art, and in doing so, question the nature and role of art in
our lives. In its intensification of objects as such, and their break into
specific objects, Judd wishes to frame real space, and re-center the viewer
in real space, through real material articulation, and through real perceptual
experience contrary to the projected trope of meaning so often applied to
artwork. Through these methods, the subject and object relationships are
continuously changed. In a single instance, we can perceive the object in a
way in which it will never be again as well as understand that our presence

in space , our own perceptual faculties, have been objectified by the

subjecthood of the work. We are at once in control and completely
powerless. This fragility, and our ability to understand its operation, is the
form of autonomy that has been too quickly lost in its commodification into
a style. If changes in art are compared backwards, there always seems to
be a reduction, since only old attributes are counted and these are always
fewer.[16] The acceptance of the aesthetic into mass culture is the Trojan
horse that art and architecture may now use to reclaim the autonomy of our
disciplines, by producing work that is operative in its seeming reduction,
subversive in its ostensible simplicity.

References
1. Fried, Michael. Shape as Form: Frank Stellas Irregular Polygons in Art
and Objecthood. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. 1998. Pp. 77.
2. Loos, Adolf. Architecture. 1910
3. Judd, Donald. Specific Objects in Complete Writings:1959-1975. New
York University Press, New York. 2005. Pp. 181-189.
4. Judd. Pp. 181
5. Gonzalez, Marta. Minimalismos, Un Signo de los Tiempos. Aldesa, Madrid.
2001. Pp.154-163.
6. Fried.Pp.77
7. Judd. Pp. 183
8. Ibid. Pp.151
9. Judd. Pp. 184
10. Gonzales. Pp. 156
11. Ibid. pp. 156.
12. Judd. Pp. 187
13. Judd. Pp. 182.

14. Judd. Pp.187

15. Judd. Pp.188