Art and Collectivity

미술과 집단성

"When it comes to art, nationalism is a goodticket to ride with", says the title of a report in the Indian Express (Mumbai, 29 Oct 2000). The newspaper report goes on to say that since Indian art was kept "ethnic" by colonialism, national liberation meant opening up to the world on India's own terms. Advocacy, at the tail end of the 20th century, would contrast dramatically with the call by Rabindranath Tagore, the founder of the academy at Santiniketan in 1901, to guard against the fetish of nationalism. "The colourless vagueness of cosmopolitanism," Tagore pronounced, "nor thefierce self-idolatry of nation-worship, is the goal of human history" (Nationalism, 1917). This contrast is significant on two counts. First is the positive aspect of "nation" as a frame in art production or circulation, at the current point of globalization when massive expansion of cultural consumers may be realized through prevailing communication networks and technology. The organization of the information market, most vividly demonstrated through the recent FIFA World Cup when one out of every five living human beings on earth watched the finals, is predicated on nations as categories. An extension of the Indian Express argument would be that tagging of artworks along the category of nation would help ensure greatest reception, and would in turn open up the reified category of "art," so as to consider new impetus from aesthetic traditions from all parts of the world many of which hereto fore regarded as "ethnic," so as to liberate art from any hegemony of "international standards." Secondly, the critique of nationalism points to a transnational civic sphere, be it Tagore's notion of people-not-nation, or the much mo re recent "transnational constellation" of Jurgen Habermas (2001), a vision for the European Union w here civil sphere beyond confines of nation opens up new possibilities, and may serve as a model for a liberated sphere on global scale. There are other levels of collectivity which art may address, for instance the Indonesian example of local communities headed by Ketua Rukun Tetangga, the neighbourhood headmen, in which community matters of culture and the arts are organically woven into the communal fabric. Art and collectivity at the national-transnational level yield a contrasting situation of, on the idealized end, the dual inputs of local culture and tradition through "nation" as necessary frame, and the concurrent development of a transnational, culturally and aesthetically vibrant civic sphere that will ensure a cosmopolitanism that is not a "colourless vagueness." In art historical studies, this is seen, for instance, in the recent discussion on "cosmopolitan modernisms." Conversely, we may see a dual tyranny of a nationalism that is a closure (sometimes stated as "ethno-nationalism" which is disputable), and an internationalism that is evolved through restrictive understanding of historical development within privileged expressions. In art historical terms, where there is a lack of investigation into the reality of multiple modernisms, the possibility of a democratic cosmopolitanism in art is severely curtailed. The advocacy of a liberal cosmopolitanism without a democratic foundation returns art to dominance of historical privileged category. A local community with lack of transnational inputs may sometimes place emphasis on neo-traditionalism which is also a double edged sword, as re kindling with traditions is both liberating and restrictive, which in turn interplays with the push and pull of the collective matrix.