Soul Searching

“A great nation deserves great art” is the slogan of the National Endowment for the Arts. It is catchy but what does it mean?

A nation inches towards greatness, in part, by assuming it doesn’t deserve much, and it maintains its greatness, in part, by understanding “greatness” is not a coronation or a title but a reflection of the quality of becoming.

Moreover, the relationship between great art and great nations is by no means tidy. Spain in the Seventeenth Century, for instance, was losing its hold on the empire and was burdened by disease. It was also entrenched in the Inquisition and abusing the American provinces. So did it deserve Velazquez, Zurbaran, Lope de Vega, Luis de Gongora, etc?

Perhaps it is more accurate to say—in the case of Spain as well as in many others—that nations get the soul searching they deserve in the work of their artists. Art is the mirror in which nations who think of themselves as great must see themselves, often, as otherwise. But that is a less catchy slogan.