Is Art about “I” or “We”?

One of the effects of the 18^th Century Enlightenment on Western civilization was a shift in the understanding of and emphasis on the human as individual.  Prior to the Enlightenment there was a common understanding that humans shared a human nature and a human experience which ties all of humanity together.  People were understood as always being in their social context – their family, their clan, tribe, nation, church, religion.   For example Tertullian said, “One Christian is no Christian”,  meaning to be a Christian is to be in community/the church.  With the Enlightenment there arises a focus on the autonomous individual and there is a conscious effort to “free” the individual from the confines of societal context;  the individual becomes accepted as the smallest social unit which soon gives birth to individual human rights and the authority of the individual over society.  

The thinking of the Enlightenment about the autonomous individual was then filtered through the romantic age in which the perceptions and feelings of each individual came to be seen as the only true way of experiencing the world.  In this thinking artistic expression came to be seen not as the way in which society (=humanity) conveys its shared values to its membership in abstract ways (for example the way in which the American flag impacts many Americans – the flag abstractly represents all that many Americans value about their nation).  Rather in the romantic period thinking art becomes the purely personal and abstract expression of the inner (emotional) life of individuals.  

David Smith, author of MONEY FOR ART: THE TANGLED WEB OF ART AND POLITICS IN AMERICAN DEMOCRACY, was interviewed in Volume 96 of the MARS HILL AUDIO JOURNAL , where he discussed how the changing way that art was understood, especially by artists, has politicized the National Endowment for the Arts to a degree that the original political founders of the endowment did not anticipate or understand.

Traditionally, according to Smith, art was understood as drawing people together for it gave us a shared way of looking at the world and ourselves.   The very thing which differentiates humans from all other life forms on earth is the ability of humans to communicate meaningfully in abstract forms.   This shared understanding and ability to communicate abstractly defines what it is to be human and prevents humanity from devolving into 6 billion absolute isolated and alienated individuals.   Art was seen as a way of helping us to become more human by giving us an interconnection and interdependency with our fellow humans and with humanity throughout history.  Smith argues that in a modern democracy shaped by the values of the Enlightenment it is important for people not to be reduced to solely self-centered individuals; it is necessary to remind people that we all belong to a greater whole – that we are social and relational beings from the time we are conceived.   As independent as we like to be, no one is an autonomous island but always exists related to some other humans. 

President Eisenhower for example had an innate distrust of materialism according to Smith and worried that America’s prosperity would drag the American soul down into an atheistic and inhuman materialism (the very thing communism was accused of doing).  

The National Endowment for the Arts was perceived by the political leaders as helping to uplift Americans out of a purely materialistic way of life to appreciate beauty, social achievement and to help humanity aspire to a great and better world.  The NEA was to help “provide what the arts only can give society.” 

What happened among artists though was a growing belief that the arts in fact exist outside of society and thus the arts can critique society but cannot be critiqued by society.  This is largely an ideal of the Enlightenment where the enlightened individual no longer is dependent in anyway of the tutelage of society but alone determines right and wrong, good and evil, and what is beauty.  Artistic self expression was thus independent of societal norms and values.   The artists then looked to the NEA to fund their individualistic expression not for the betterment of society but for the benefit of the artists themselves (to fund them to pursue their individualistic efforts of self expression).   The irony of course, as Smith points out, is that for the artists to be able to critique society their art has to be social in some sense – it has to be understood as protest or critique, and not just personal abstraction with no meaning to anyone else. 

The question raised by Smith is whether art is about “I” or “we” – is it merely a personal expression or does it in fact have some broader social context and construct?   Is art merely the personal expression of an individual or can it in fact be judged by society as to whether it benefits society or conveys meaning or is detrimental to the ideals and values of the society to which the artists belongs?

British philosopher John Macmurray wrote a book PERSONS IN RELATIONSHIP in which he says the very thing that makes us human, that gives us personhood is our relationships.  One cannot speak of a completely isolated individual to mean a full human being, for to be human is to be in relationships.  Thus, says Metropolitan Kallistos Ware  the basic human word is not “I” but “we.”    Art in this thinking is that which captures our common human experience and gives full expression to our shared humanity.  Art helps us to move beyond the limits of self and both to share in our common humanity and to aspire to something greater than humanity itself.