[1] Adorno retraces the historical evolution of art[2] into its paradoxical state of "semi-autonomy" within capitalist modernity, considering the socio-political implications of this progression.

Some critics have described the work as Adorno's magnum opus and ranked it among the most important pieces on aesthetics published in the 20th century.

However, Adorno does not feel that overtly politicized content is art's greatest critical strength: rather, he champions a more abstracted type of "truth-content" (Wahrheitsgehalt).

A series of revisions were undertaken between September 1968 and July 1969, weeks before his death in August of that year.

[5] An initial English translation by Christian Lenhardt in 1984 broke "the original single-paragraph sections into smaller paragraphs".