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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
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