Art and Identity (from the archive)

Art may not always be created to affirm the identity of the culture the artist lives within, but in art history the best art did this. It's true that Shakespeare was interested in theatrical entertainment, but he was also affirming Elizabethan culture. Great art affirms the sacred elements within the culture, and low art does this too in a less sophisticated way, or art used to do this, before globalism and internationalism made people and cultures less isolated.

It is mainly that old cultural Marxism behind the modern Western denial of differences in people and the rejection of any biological or ethnic connection with the creation of cultures, even as it demands no comparison with “evil' Western culture in the art of non-Western people, which contradicts the idea of there being no differences between people. This leads to a jumble of art, at least in the West, with no discernible cultural identity and it certainly does not reflect what is sacred in the culture---modern art reflects the chaos of the relativity of modern culture, and that is not even art.

Modern art philosophers want to leave biology out of art philosophy (and everything else) and say that culture alone creates the differences in identities. Art is a universal instinct and contains many of the same elements in all cultures, even so, the genetic traits of the artist, and his ethnic group, affect the kind of art the artist creates.

Every person and every culture at least unconsciously seems to want to claim what works for them to be good for everyone---this is the natural will to power working.  The way to deal with it is not to deny it, or call it evil ethnocentrism, but to allow the natural separations of people and cultures, where each people can affirm their own people, culture, and art.  This is what developed the best art overall in human history.