தமிழ் ஓவிய கண்காட்சி "...On the one hand, the work of art is a product of its time, a mirror of its age, a historical reflection of society to which both the author and the original audience belonged. On the other hand, it is surely no idealism to assume that the work of art is not merely a product, but a producer of its age; not merely a mirror of the past but a lamp to the future.." - Karthigesu Sivathamby in Literary History in Tamil 'Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts; the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others; but of the three, the only quite trustworthy one is the last.' - John Ruskin
"Nation building is rightly, though at times excessively, associated with political and social processes. Yet, it is not confined to national liberation movements, charismatic leaders and liberators, wars of national independence, and the struggle of national entities to emerge to independence from a position of relative powerlessness and subservience to a dominant power. Nations are as much cultural as political forms, and the creation of a unique high culture of world significance is often central to their legitimation. True, the effects of culture are not as clearly quantifiable as those of politics. The effect of Verdi, for example, on Italian nationalism is hardly as clear cut as that of Garibaldi. Wagner's impact on German nationalism is amorphous alongside the concrete political achievement of Bismarck. William Butler Yeats' influence on Irish nationalism is not as definable as that of Michael Collins or Eamon De Valera. The inspiration of Chaim Nachman Bialik on Jewish nationalism is diffuse in comparison with that of Herzl. Yet it may be argued justly that artists have equal if not greater importance. They above all express the nation's distinctiveness; their creativity is part of the momentum to independence; they are themselves symbols and icons of the nation's unique creative power; they regenerate their nation morally and speak for its heart and conscience." ( John Hutchinson, European Institute, London School of Economics and David Aberbach, Department of Jewish Studies, McGill University, Quebec, Canada in Nations & Nationalism, Volume 4, 1999)
"Artists have played a crucial role in the expression, representation and crystallisation of the nation. A study of the art of a people is a study of its culture, or, to use Herder's term, its 'spirit'. Artists have thus been the chroniclers of national identity and of its changes over time, under varying historical circumstances. As Herder made clear a long time ago, not only the visual arts, but also music and dance, are crucial parts of the heritage of 'the people', embodying and documenting different states of what Durkheim called the 'conscience collective', the spirit of a people, as it was, as it changed, and as it persisted or revived this or that principle from the past." (from the Introduction to an Exhibition in honour of Professor Anthony D Smith held in conjunction with a Conference on 'When is Nation' at the London School of Economics and Political Science, 23-24 April 2004)
"...There is a tendency in modern times to depreciate the value of the beautiful and over stress the value of the useful...We do not ordinarily recognise how largely our sense of virtue is a sense of the beautiful in conduct and our sense of sin a sense of ugliness and deformity in conduct... It is not necessary that every man should have his artistic faculty developed, his taste trained, his sense of beauty and insight into form and colour and that which is expressed in form and colour, made habitually active, correct and sensitive. It is necessary that those who create, whether in great things or small, whether in the unusual masterpieces of art and genius or in the small common things of use that surround a man's daily life, should be habituated to produce and the nation habituated to expect the beautiful in preference to the ugly, the noble in preference to the vulgar, the fine in preference to the crude, the harmonious in preference to the gaudy. A nation surrounded daily by the beautiful, noble, fine and harmonious becomes that which it is habituated to contemplate and realizes the fullness of the expanding Spirit in itself.... " - Sri Aurobindo on the National value of Art |
