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RACE, NATIONALITY AND ART*

LYND WARD

Our multitudes theories of race and nationality in art have their sources in the obvious fact that differences exist--that Chinese painting, for example, is different from the painting of Renaissance Italy, which in turn is different from that of modern France. If we are not account for these differences, it can be by only one of three possible explanations: first, it may be that there is something in the blood stream of the individual and of the race to which he belongs that makes it inevitable for him to produce work with a specific quality, that no one is whose veins that particular blood does not flow can hope to achieve that quality. Or second, it may be that within the boundaries of geographic areas a people develop a unique feeling that results in the distinct flavor in their art product. Or as a third alternative, it may be that the character and qualities of the artist's work are determined not at all by his blood, only incidentally by his geography, and predominantly by a combination of forces in the cultural environment and the social situation in which he finds himself. It will be seen that the first of these imposes inviolable categories on the artist on the basis of accident of birth, that the second gives him a static, geographically - determined character, and that the third makes him a free agent reacting to an environment in which the elements are in process of change and continual rearrangement. This question is not an academic one. It is vital importance to artists because in many ways the character and scope of American art in years to come will depend on our understanding of racial differences, here where the pattern of growth has brought together some of all the peoples of the earth.
The easiest way is to assign the reason for all differences to blood. It is the one that involves the least mental activity, and a clear-cut division is made immediately. But because it rests on a very vague base, hypotheses can be built on it by anyone who chooses. On the one hand you are told that there are innate abilities that make the Italians great painters; on the other it is claimed that Italy's greatest painters, specifically Giotto, da Vinci, Raphael, and Titian, were not of Italian blood at all, but were Nordic, their ancestory going back to the Nordic invaders of Italy. Regarding the Negro, it is maintained that when white and black are crossed there is always a reversion to what these white theoreticians call the lower racial strain, and the resultant hybrid can never be anything but a Negro. But on another occasion, if a Negro makes a definite cultural contribution, it is because his germ-plasm is predominantly white. Or it is said that while the English have demonstrated great abilities in literature and drama, they have no
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*The writer wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to Mr. Meyer Schapiro for part of the material contained in this paper. 
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ability in painting. On the other hand it will be seriously proposed that the only hope for the development of an American art lies in the development of the Anglo-Saxon elements in the population.
What is there behind this maze of contradictory claims for the part blood heritage plays in the creative activity of man? Is there any evidence that biological differences exist, as the proponents of racial superiorities insist?
The testimony on this point is very explicit. All responsible anthropologists agree that there is no acceptable scientific foundation for the belief that one race is more primitive, basically inferior or fundamentally different in mind from another. This being the case, the unique qualities of African tribal art, for example, must proceed not from the blood stream but from cultural circumstances that stem originally from geographic and climatic conditions. The Negro who is born into that isolated culture becomes a part of it not because of special capacities in his bedroom, but by the mere circumstance of birth, and a Negro who is born into another culture must, if he is to function validly, become part of it. There are no mystical blood lines leading back to Africa.
What then are we to think of certain leaders of Negro art who would put the Negro artist in America to work in the forms of African tribal art, seeking thereby to develop his "unique racial qualities"? Surely they are playing into the hands of those whites who for economic reasons are anxious to deny to the American Negro the benefits of the only culture with which he has had any contact for hundreds of years, the only culture of which he could ever become a valid part.
On the question of racial purity, the testimony is equally clear. Not only is there no sharp dividing line between the different skin-pigmentations, but even within the white race itself, to speak of pure racial types is meaningless. From a scientific point of view there is no suck thing as French, German or Italian type. The three general strains that are found in Europe run in striations from east to west. From the racial angle, then, what similarity and unity can be conjured up is greater between the north of France and the north of Germany than it is between Northern and Southern extremities within each country, and so on. What this does to the suppositions of racial characteristics in the arts of these countries is easily seen.
But even if there is no ground for a structure of racial differences in Europe, the theorists of blood chemistry will still point the the Jewish race as evidence of the persistence of unique qualities that can be traced to blood alone. They hold it to be self-evident that the Jewish race has definite physical characteristics and equally characteristic cultural qualities, and the one stems from the other. But her again the inquiries of science tend to demolish the structure.
The concept of a Semitic race is a myth. Arabs and Jews are usually assumed to compose it, and Arabs and Hebrew both belong to the Semitic classification of languages. But when you come down to physical types, Arabs are almost exclusively Mediterraneans, whereas a minority of Jews are Mediterraneans, and the type that occurs most frequently is the Alpine. Wide studies have shown the greatest range of variation in physical characteristics, and the one thing that seems to emerge is a tendency for those of the Jewish religion to approximate the physical types of the people among
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