Not just any art is capable of stimulating a revolution. The work would have to be of a specific medium, a highly mobile medium. Sculpture, performance, and painting are not sufficient, because their audience is confined to a single space and time. The medium instead needs to be able to quickly traverse space and time in order to have a unifying, revolutionary effect. Video, digital photographs, and electronic texts are examples of potentially revolutionary media; they can transfer information across the globe (through the power of the internet) in a matter of seconds.
If, for example, an electronic text of Adorno's 'The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception' was circulated and read by the masses, would revolution be possible? There is certainly the potential for revolution. If the masses read Adorno and realized that they are being controlled, desensitized, and standardized by the culture industry, they could form a unified rebelious force. Perhaps the reason why Adorno is so pessimistic about revolution is because, at his time, he could never hope for his writing to penetrate the masses (there was no internet, no electronic texts in the 1940's).
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Or, to take your final question in a different direction, do the masses have the "leisure" to read Adorno in the first place (if one considers the education and patience required to read him). This is one of the questions I've always had about Marxist theorists.
Its also struck me that in this essay, Adorno is certainly practicing what he preaches: despite my reservations about his thesis, I do see the essay as a work of art.
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