Claim. Because each person is created in resemblance to one of God’s Individual Images, the artist’s individuality is unavoidably expressed in the artwork — and the manifestation of that divinely-rooted individuality is precisely what gives joy to God and to others, which is why great masterpieces bear the artist’s name.
Elaboration. Lee’s account of artistic individuality (Individuality) is theological rather than psychological. Each human being is created in resemblance to one of the Individual Images within God’s Original Image, so individuality is not a contingent feature of personality but a structural feature of personhood rooted in divine reality. Artistic creation, as an expression of the artist, therefore expresses an individual image of divine origin.
The inferential payoff: ‘The artist gives joy to God and to others by manifesting his or her individuality.’ Individuality is not opposed to the purpose-for-the-whole but is the very means by which an artist contributes to it — God receives joy from the diverse expression of His own Individual Images, and other humans receive joy from encountering an image of God they themselves do not embody. Lee adduces empirical confirmation: ‘In great masterpieces the individuality of the artist is fully manifested. This is why the artist’s name is usually attached to the work of art’ — citing Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony and Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ Symphony as examples.
This position is theoretically important because it sets up the critique of socialist realism. Socialist realism, by demanding conformity to Party policy, ‘deprived artists of their individual expression and has standardized all works of art’ (section X). If individuality is divinely rooted, suppressing it is not merely culturally unfortunate but ontologically wrong — it severs the artist from the very channel through which God expresses Himself in diverse forms.
The position also constrains Unificationism’s own program: even within a unified culture, individuality of artists must be preserved, since standardization would undermine the very mechanism by which God’s manifold Individual Images receive aesthetic expression. The chapter’s section on ‘Unity of Universality and Individuality’ makes this explicit — Unification culture will form ‘through a universal spirituality and expression of art on a higher dimension, while at the same time preserving the essences of different national cultures, each with its own individuality.’ Worth a thread: how this constraint cashes out in practice — what would distinguish a Unificationist ‘unified culture’ from a homogenizing global monoculture?
See also. god-is-artist-universe-is-work-of-art, individual-image-as-uniqueness-from-inner-hyungsang, unificationism-as-unity-of-realism-and-idealism