The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, & Human Evolution

by Denis Dutton

Book Overview

In a groundbreaking new book that does for art what Stephen Pinker's "The Language Instinct" did for linguistics, Denis Dutton overturns a century of art theory and criticism and revolutionizes our... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1596914017
• ISBN13: 9781596914018
• Release Date: December 2008
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Length: 278 Pages
• Weight: 1.11 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.1" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Aesthetics evolves

Far from thinking that art activity is a stand alone endeavor, Dutton makes the point that our sensibilites,understanding, and enjoyment of art has evolved. Not only has it evolved, but this has happened over various cultures.Other cultures can understand our likes and dislikes and vice versa. Dutton is a good writer: not overly academic and he writes clearly. What I particularily enjoyed in his book is the twelve points that he elaborated about the enjoyment of works of art. Perhaps this is so because in a paper I wrote a few years back enumerated what were my thoughts about defining art. My points were ten in number,but the number is not important. So,I feel a certain kinship with his approach. You can access Dutton lecturing to a group at google, which he elaborates on his book.Worth watching. Tom Brand brandart@comcast.net

It's about much more than art

If you're reading this, you probably enjoy books. You take pleasure from good writing, compelling insights, and the kind of well-turned argument that gives you that "aha!" moment of recognition, identification, and delight. Imagine then the pleasure of reading a book which not only has these characteristics, but provides a convincing explanation of why you feel that way. And not just of why you enjoy that kind of experience, but why (for example) you would feel disappointed if you learned that the author had plagiarized the material. (Why should you? It's the same text, isn't it? There's something else going on here.) This is a wonderful book. It's not just about art, in the same way that Pinker's work (cited in the blurb) isn't just about language. It's about being human, and how the last few hundreds of thousands of years of evolution made us that way. It's about the complex interplay between natural selection and sexual selection in this process, an interplay which Darwin captured so well in The Descent of Man. It's about philosophy, too: about ontology and category. The book draws on art as a rich source of facts and paradoxes about human nature. Does intent matter? Why do artists sign their work while plumbers don't? What is the relationship between artistic value and monetary price? And (notoriously) can a urinal on a plinth be thought of as art - and why do people get so worked up about it? I hesitated to choose this book, because I feared that it was going to be just another book on art theory. (And why would that make me reluctant? Hmmm....) I'm really glad that I overcame my hesitation. In fact I'd rank this as the best non-fiction book that I've read over the last year - and it's been a good year. (Best fiction is, obviously Fulghum's Third Wish, a book that I want to re-read in the light of some of the insights I've gained from Dutton.) Highly recommended.

The Sexual Selection theory of art

Why have human beings always enjoyed making and experiencing art throughout history and in all areas of the world? This book is a bold claim about the nature of human beings. The claim is that the things we enjoy doing and the things we appreciate about each other were shaped largely by our history as a species rather than by what we learn from each other during our own life time. This may not seem too bold to those unfamiliar with the academic climate of modern social sciences and humanities. In academia, particularly in social sciences and humanities, it is virtually heretical to claim any significant role at all for "nature" in human behavior. Although biologists in general agree that human nature is the result of an interaction of the expression of genes and their environment, the philosophy underlying the arts and social sciences heavily emphasizes the role of learning and enculturation in shaping us. Still, even among biologists, Dutton's version of the claim is somewhat controversial. Dutton doesn't just say that human beings are the result of an evolutionary history. He doesn't just say that our brain and other organs are shaped by that history. Those claims are uncontroversial in biology. Dutton's particular boldness is that he claims that our nervous system specifically was shaped during the Pleistocene period of our history to favor certain qualities in potential mates, and that this shaping is the reason we have art. The reason this claim is controversial even within biology has to do with two kinds of problem. The claim is rooted in a relatively recent subfield of biology known as evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary biologists are split about the potential of evolutionary psychology to explain human behavior. Some, proponents of evolutionary psychology, believe that the only way we can fully trace the workings of the human mind is to find what specific sorts of problems it evolved to solve. Others are skeptical on principle. Some just think the whole endeavor is wrongheaded. The late evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould argued that the human mind was more like a collection of byproducts of adaptations than adaptations. The philosopher Jerry Fodor argues that while modularity of the sort assumed by Dutton's chosen form of evolutionary psychology is clearly the rule in lower level neural processes like perception, it is unlikely in principle to play a role in higher mental processes. Still others agree with the principles behind evolutionary psychology but don't think we can do it practically because the evidence we would need is too elusive and too easily obscured . They often cite the unfortunate tendency to explain everything glibly in terms of hypothetical Pleistocene adaptations. This tendency has been noted about evolutionary biology in general, but in other areas of evolutionary biology the methodological issues are more readily addressed. When we try to explain the roots of human behaviors, t

Stimulating ideas

This innovative book outlines two evolutionary forces in the development of art; natural and sexual selection. Initially I doubted if the author could make a case to support these ideas but he ultimately makes a compelling argument. Some of his theories reminded me of the work of Desmond Morris, in that the ideas often remained unprovable but highly interesting nevertheless. As an added bonus his writing is sprinkled with anecdotes and insights into the world of creativity. While this book will be exploited by partisans on both sides of the postmodernist divide the author preserves a certain humility that gives credibility to his assertions without begging for further explanation. He also sidesteps most of the atheistic/theistic sophistries that mar similar work, an accomplishment difficult to achieve in today's politically charged atmosphere. Here are some quotes: Why people crave art: "The arts intensify experience, enhance it, extended it in time, and make it coherent". Regarding the foggy waters that artists navigate: "We pay craftsmen to paint houses or repair clocks because of the dependability of learned techniques.... But in the sense of using skill to produce a preconceived result, creative artists strictly speaking never know what they're doing". Regarding the definition of great art: "This falls in line with Tolstoy's view that artistic value is achieved only when artwork expresses the authentic values of its maker.... To put it as plainly as possible: Tolstoy and Murray both argue that the best art is produced in societies that believe in something."

Explaining Art Through Evolution, and Vice Versa

Every culture we know of, every tribe, current or historic, tells stories. They all make music. They might not all do watercolors, but they all do some sort of representational art. Why is this? After all, storytelling, music, and painting are far less effective in putting food on the table than, say, hunting or planting. In examining a cultural universal, like making art, it makes sense to seek an answer from evolution. No one scientifically doubts that we have our bodies and physiology due to evolution (although religious doubters continue to pipe up). Over the past three decades, we have seen evolutionary explanations for human sexuality, language, even religion. Can Darwin's principles be applied to our diligence in making art, and our of love of art? Denis Dutton thinks so, and in _The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution_ (Bloomsbury Press), he has put forward a cogent and entertaining evolutionary explanation of our artistic impulses. Dutton, who teaches the philosophy of art, and also founded and edits the popular and useful website _Arts & Letters Daily_, has good grasps on art and evolution, and his explanations for artistic behavior and appreciation help us understand both disciplines. If evolution explains art-making through all cultures, you'd expect some general agreement on, say, what paintings are beautiful. Statistics have been done, and it does seem that there is a consensus between cultures on what is the prettiest landscape. In the Pleistocene era, our ancestors were nomads. They would have liked the blue of water or of distant vegetation; it would have meant sustenance from good hunting grounds. Music is perhaps harder to explain. We need hearing as a way of understanding our surroundings, but the rhythmic, pitched sounds of music would seem to contribute nothing to survival ability. It may be that musical sounds helped the birth of language, and music with its associated dances may have helped with tribal cooperation and bonding. Stories, though, can have real and obvious survival advantages. Stories can convey facts; a fanciful folktale from the Yanomamo about jaguars, for instance, gives plenty of information and advice about how to live in an environment where jaguars are a threat. Fiction enables us to understand the mental experiences of others, not just of imagined characters, but of authors. Reading minds in this way is easily understood as having survival advantages for a social species like ourselves. Dutton believes that making art had origins as a display of skill that would lure prospective mates and intimidate potential rivals. Making art is an "extra", something that only a smart, vigorous individual could do, an individual that did not have to expend full resources on life's basics. Art is a fitness display. The scope of these ideas allows Dutton to bring in many thought-provoking examples, and some of them are a real surprise. Marcel Duchamp's placing a urinal on a