Are the arts intrinsically linked to our national identity?

On April 15 2019, the Notre Dame Cathedral caught fire, resulting in the collapse of its spire and severe damage to its roof. Shortly afterwards, French President Emmanuel Macron gave a speech about Notre Dame, and his plans to repair it, saying “Notre Dame is our history, our literature, part of our psyche, the place of all our great events”. By ‘our’ he’s presumably referring to the people of France, specifically of Parisians in this case. But is Notre Dame truly this integral part of French culture or French identity that Macron’s speech makes it out to be?

Notre Dame is after all a Catholic church, with its culture and identity entirely linked to Catholicism. Whilst technically France is a majority Christian country, it’s only a slight majority at 51.1% of the population identifying at Christian (Institut Montaigne 2016). And yet, it’s impossible to deny that Notre Dame is one of the buildings most thought of when the conversation turns to French national landmarks, right up there with The Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe. All this does begin to raise a very important question, what are the links between a piece of art, of any style, and the country it is made in. How does art contribute toward national identity?

What makes these artists worthy of inclusion when we talk about British identity?

Let us leave France for a moment, and return to the national identity we have closest to hand: our own. There does seem to be a clear understanding of which forms of art define British identity: writers like Shakespeare, Dickins, and Austen; artists like Turner, Bacon, and Hirst; musicians like Adele, McCartney, or Mercury. The same names come up over and over again.

But what makes these artists worthy of inclusion when we talk about British identity? After all, the works they produce aren’t always really about Britain. To take the example of Shakespeare, the majority of his plays are not set in England, taking place in countries around the world.

When the idea of Britishness does come into his work, it’s not always in the most positive way. In the 2012 Olympic ceremony, Kenneth Branagh recited the ‘Be Not Afraid’ monologue from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. However, the monologue is not referring to England’s land at all, but to an island that is now being colonised in a very similar fashion to how England was treating Africa at the time. It is hardly a period you would want to bring up when celebrating British cultural identity – and yet it was used all the same. So is it less about the content of the art that matters, and more about something else?

There are very few writers of today that get talked about with the same level of cultural relevance

Prestige perhaps? It’s safe to say that the artists and creators that tend to be associated most with British national identity tend to be older creative works. Books published in 17th-19th centuries come up a lot as ‘classic’ British novels, and there are very few writers of today that get talked about with the same level of cultural relevance.

Age does appear to be a factor in what goes into making a piece of art become a part of Britain’s cultural identity – this makes sense. Over time, pieces of art are passed on with more and more people being encouraged to read them, to think about them, and their reputation grows as more people deliver interesting and unique takes on their work. Eventually, as other artists and pieces of work fall into obscurity, their work gains a level of status that ensures their continual relevance.

Due to who that work was created by, and where those people were from, those pieces of work are put under generalised banner of ‘work by British artists’, regardless of whether or not the art itself has anything to do with Britain. Although there is an argument to made that the person’s experiences in living in a country will inherently shape the art they create.

Those who did not cry for the spire as it was burning were not French

Eric Zemmour

The danger of art being linked to national identity is that it can be pushed too far to create excesses of nationalism, playing into a cultural divide. To return to the Notre-Dame fire, French journalist Eric Zemmour wrote for the FigaroVox in response to the event that: “Those who did not cry for the spire as it was burning were not French”. It should be pointed out that Zemmour is strongly anti-immigration. The exploitation of art that is intrinsically linked to national identity to appeal to extremist political views is clearly concerning.

That is not to say that praising a particularly British piece of work like Sherlock Holmes is going to lead to anti-immigration sentiment. Honestly, this topic is so broad and complex that it would take an article far longer than this to properly delve into all of its complexities. A person’s relationship to the country they live in, and their relationship with the works of art produced in that country is always going to be subjective. If you feel particularly proud to be from the same country as Charlotte Brontë or W.H. Auden, there is nothing inherently wrong with that.

If you do feel strongly about these works of art, take a moment to think about how and why, and even if  they connect to the idea of your nationality at all. Not everyone will feel the same way about that piece of art, or its relationship with any cultural identity. I would feel absolutely devastated if the Globe Theatre went up in flames (for the second time), but out of appreciation for the art and ideas it produces, not out of a sense of pride for Britain and the country’s connection to the work that is produced in it.