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Values and Art
| Article
# : |
10665 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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1 / 1986 |
1,780 Words |
| Author
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James Cooper
James Cooper is an advisor to the Arts section of The World
and I, and the art critic for the New York City Tribune |
The inherent longing of mankind to experience idealism and patriotism has held precedence throughout the history of recorded civilization. During the nineteenth century the Germans had a word for it: "Sehen."
In the struggle to unify their nation the collective efforts of the German artists, writers, composers, and intellectuals were greatly responsible for creating a unified national spirit and a cohesive culture strong enough to meld eleven hundred separate principalities and city-states into one huge industrial nation.
A hundred years earlier, a gifted French artist named Jacques--Louis David had similarly electrified his fellow citizens with a series of nationalistic paintings that literally transformed the moral and civic climate of an archaic monarchial society into a modern state. Crowds streamed through Paris to catch a glimpse of the Oath of the Horatii when it was first exhibited. Until then the culture of France had been awash in a sudsy bath of mythology promoted by its arcane ruling class that sapped much of the nation's strength. What David restored to the people of France was their sense of national destiny and moral purpose.
Several years ago, William Manchester's book Goodbye to Darkness expressed doubts whether America still possessed the spiritual toughness to defend itself as it had in World War II. He attributed what he perceived as our current national weakness directly to the collapse of American cultural values during the 1960s and 1970s. He concluded that the reason we were able to defeat the combined resources of the Axis powers was because even through the darkest days of the war we never doubted the validity of
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