Artistic Expression of National Cultural Identity

Abstract

The turn of the 20th and the 21st century is a very interesting period. On the one hand, there is a growth of internationalist tendencies, which make us look for common values and universal culture, and on the other hand, the centrifugal tendencies lead to the revival of new forms of nationalism and national and religious conflicts. Integrative tendencies are an unquestioned fact of every aspect of societal life: economic (emergence of the world market, rise of international exchange and cooperation, modernization of technology, popularization of Western patterns of consumption, great development of transport and means of communication, etc.), political (expansion of liberal democracy, creation of a united Europe), and in culture, which succumbs to a tendency to create global and universal mass culture (mass media, tourist movement, fashion, show business etc.). It turns out, however, that neither international commerce, nor the blossoming systems of communication and transport, provide us with the common feeling of identity or belonging. At the same time the need for those does not cease to exist. As a result, “people rediscover or create new historical identity”, since they feel uprooted and “need new sources of identity and new forms of stable community, new systems of moral imperatives, which could give them a sense of meaningful and purpose life” (Samuel Huntington). One of the most important forms of collective and cultural identity still turns out to be the national one. The prophecies of the end of the era of nations have not come true. “The strength of national sentiments – writes Jerzy Szacki – even if changeable in time and diverse in space, does not show any symptoms of clear decline, (...) the era of nations keeps lasting and nothing predicts it will end soon.”