Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began

by Ellen Dissanayake

Book Overview

To Ellen Dissanayake, the arts are biologically evolved propensities of human nature: their fundamental features helped early humans adapt to their environment and reproduce themselves successfully over generations. In Art and Intimacy she argues for the joint evolutionary origin of art and intimacy, what we commonly call love.

It all begins with the human trait of birthing immature and helpless infants. To ensure that mothers find...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0295991968
• ISBN13: 9780295991962
• Release Date: April 2012
• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Length: 268 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 8.9"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A Book of Great Beauty and Vast Riches

I have been trying for some time to write a review of this book. I give up: I simply cannot do it justice in 1,000 words or less. The book is not flawless, but in the two years since I first read it, I have come back to it again and again, always learning something. It took a long time to read in the first place, because every few pages I would run into an idea that required a few days' thought. The book is illustrated with wonderful photos. Nobody can look at those babies in Chapter 1 without smiling, thus proving Dissanayake's points. My particular favorite is the little girl in Sudan absorbed in her drawing (p197). Some photos I wish had been bigger. The mbari house on page 153 is barely distinguishable. Anybody interested in human affairs will benefit from this book. Even those outside human concerns should read it, simply to see how perceptive and stimulating the ideas are.