Caudwell thought that art is coming out of this collective experience of tribal people.

Interviewee: Neala Schleuning

Caudwell is very interesting. The woman that I wrote a book about, Meridel Le Sueur, first introduced me to him many, many years ago. The anarchists and the communists argue over whose ideology he followed and it’s just so unfortunate because he died so young at the age of 30 during his first battle against Franco in the civil war in Spain. In his book, Illusion and Reality (1937) he goes way back in history and talks about how art is coming out of this collective experience of tribal people, of people getting together to celebrate and even create their collective reality. This kind of community-based art is part of the natural living together that people do. It’s an expression of who we are, and of our highest ideas, collectively art always is. In an essay entitled “Beauty” in Studies & Further Studies in a Dying Culture, he talked about a dialectical understanding of art: “there must be a community of desire as well as a community of perception. There must be a community of instinct, as well as a community of cognition.  The heart, as well as the reason, must be social.  The community must share a body in common, as well as an environment in common.  Its hopes, as well as its beliefs, must be one.  This hope, which is the opposite of science, we may call art.”