Art and Community

The noted art critic, Suzy Gablik (1991) who was also at Black Mountain, raises the specific question of the relationship of art and community. She cites many examples where art has supported the creation and maintenance of community. She believes that art can foster a growth in mutual appreciation that goes beyond ideology, one that is grounded in embodied experience.

William Doty (2001) suggests that it is indeed the artist’s work to imagine community. He says that the interaction of the human soul and the realm of human experience known as art are located in the imagination, and he proposes that imagination is the greatest contribution of our species to the future of the planet. The artist (by which he means all of us), as we imagine the past and the future, and attempt to live artistically in the present, raise elements of our existence to a level that transcends self. The heart of the matter of art-making, he says, is communitas.

Communitas is the word used also by the anthropologist Victor Turner in his analysis of the ritual process in human societies. Turner (1995) speaks of communitas in the context of two major aspects of human social bonds, aspects which are always present, juxtaposed and alternating. One aspect of human interrelatedness is that of society as structured, differentiated, and hierarchical. The second aspect is that of society as a community of equal individuals who submit to the general authority of the elders. This aspect is connected to the idea that there is a generic bond among humans. Turner uses the word communitas to describe this modality of social relatedness. Communitas, for Turner, has an existential quality, an aspect of potentiality, and a quality of immediacy. Communitas is often experienced in a ritual context and tends to be related to symbols and metaphors, art and religion, rather than political and legal structures. In communitas individuals are not seen as roles in social status schema, but meet one another in the manner of Martin Buber’s “I-Thou” relationship. What is important is the dialectic between the immediacy of communitas and the mediacy of structure. Communitas cannot stand alone. Material and organizational needs also must be met for the survival of the society. The story of Black Mountain College illustrates the alternating nature of structure and communitas.