Art as a Form of Knowledge: The Implications for Critical Management

Abstract

Theodor Adorno (1970/1997) declared that art was a form of knowledge. In a somewhat related vein, his critical theorist colleague Herbert Marcuse (1956/1998) characterized art as a mode of cognition that is an alternative to positivism. The work of these two scholars is linked with the school of thought called ‘The Frankfurt School’. Famous for its notion and development of ‘critical theory’, the Frankfurt School’s work was carried out initially at the Institut für Sozialforschung (the Institute for Social Research). This Institute was established in, but financially independent of, Frankfurt University. Founded in February 1923, a number of the scholars associated with the Institute found themselves drawn to art and the aesthetics as arenas in which alternative ways of thinking and ‘seeing’ were possible. For this group of scholars, in many ways, authentic art represented a ‘Great Refusal’ (Marcuse, 1956/1998, p. 149) against totalizing forms of logic.