Gaga Aesthetics

Adam Geczy, David Carrier, Vicki Karaminas, Tiziana Andina

"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 Lukc̀s, this explores the ever-urgent notion that high culture has become deeply enmeshed with popular culture....