Cycle: XL

PhD student: Lorenzo De Donato

Role: R1 - First Stage Researcher

Supervisor: Prof. Vinicio Busacchi, Università degli Studi di Cagliari (Italy), Prof. Joahn Frederik Hartle, Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien (Austria)

The research project "Teratology, or the Power of the Negative in the Work of Art: Investigations into the Relevance of T. W. Adorno's Aesthetic Theory"aims to: (A) explore the possibility of actualizing Adorno's critical-aesthetic teachings, analyzing the developments within postmodern society through emerging forms of artistic expression and aesthetic conceptualization, and the new dialectic today established between art, aesthetics, and society; (B) redefine the concept of art, taking into account the transformations of the last fifty years (since the publication of Adorno's "Aesthetic Theory") - this will involve examining new forms of art and new modes of artistic production; (C) redefine the concept of aesthetics by incorporating the most current approaches and recent trends in the discipline; (D) reconceptualize the relationship between art and aesthetics, considering all possible connections and interrelations between the so-called new art forms and their interpretation by contemporary aesthetic philosophy currents; (E) investigate the conditions of possibility for the teratological, the anti-aesthetic, and the formless as explanatory categories of the characteristics and interpretations Adorno attributes to the artwork - this will involve examining the hypothesis that art no longer rejects traits of ugliness, deformity, asymmetry, disorder, or disharmony, but rather tends to assimilate, incorporate, and normalize them (not merely as representational content or mere figuration but as intrinsic elements and techniques within the realization of the artwork).