About book The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, And Human Evolution (2008)
Denis Dutton sets out to address a challenging question; how do the Arts, with their excesses and disconnections from the real world, relate to human evolutionary history? Given that evolution manufactures no trait in a vacuum, and punishes any creature which is not attuned to its environmental realities, Arts and Survival should be forces at odds. Instead, Dutton builds a persuasive argument for how human artistic preferences and practices assisted human survival in the Paleolithic era, and how those influences are at play in the ways we produce and appreciate artwork.The author successfully applies evolutionary psychology to the traditions of landscape painting, the admiration we reserve for artists of great skill, the hostility shown when a fake or forgery is revealed, storytelling traditions of all kinds and even why humanity has created Arts traditions around the senses of Sight and Sound but not Smell.His argument isn't perfect. While Dutton goes to great lengths to stress the universality of the Arts in all human cultures ( a welcome voice of reason in a field of study currently obsessed with cultural relativism), his sampling of Great Thinkers does not stray far from the Western canon (Aristotle, Plato, Kant, and the like). Surely, if all of humanity is equally engaged in the Arts, then wouldn't all cultures have insights on the topic? Female readers may also not appreciate his description of the evolution of song, literature, and poetry as an extension of male courtship rites. In addition, I would have liked to see some attempt to relate his arguments about the Arts in Paleolithic societies with the available fossils and artifacts from the era. "The Art Instinct" is a book intended to start a conversation about the role of evolution in the creation of the Arts, a job it does quite well. It is then up to the readers to continue the investigation alone. While Dutton's theories are interesting, I find he relies to often on singular sources of knowledge, specifically Steven Pinker. While I understand Dutton is modelling his theory loosely on Pinker's developments in linguistics as an evolutionary adaptation/instinct, I think the subject matter of art as a human instinct and not a culturally infused by-product of evolution demands a wider array of sources and scientific research. Dutton also takes a significantly long-winded approach to his explanations. I did not always find his explanations or examples on target, and they were often unnecessarily repetitive, rather than adding new information. Therefore, once Dutton had come back to his point I was left wanting more sources and examples to back up the theory. Dutton makes a good start, but his examples and follow through is lacking. Take for example chapter 5. He argues that art is not an adaptation, but also it is not a by-product. But he never really clearly defines what it is. It seems he has spent the whole chapter defining the way in which we should approach the chapter, while never really giving an explanation for how art is related to natural selection. Dutton explains that each individual piece of art gives us a unique experience that excites an intrinsic emotional reaction therefore it is not acting as a convenient replacement for going out and experiencing the same thing (ex. climbing a mountain) - meaning it is not a by-product. Well, that's all and good if you're talking about landscapes and still-lifes, but how does this apply to Suprematist, Constructivist, Neo-plastic, or Pop art? While I can theorize as to what he means - obviously the black square being the ideal "universal" form that would allow for a "universal" art means it has intrinsic value to us a human beings, if it is intrinsic it must relate to our evolution from our Pleistocene ancestors, but what Dutton should explain is exactly where this "intrinsic, emotional reaction" comes from. In my opinion, he fails to do so.I find Dutton's arguments for fiction's evolutionary basis compelling. However, I don't think this was a very innovative take on the subject. Common sense tells us that fictional literature is still a didactic tool used to assess possible situations of conflict that may occur in our own lives, and to "deepen our grasp of human social and emotional experience." This would have been of use to our hunter-gather ancestors in forming societies, relationships, and for surviving threats. I also feel that Dutton tries to tackle too many forms of art in his analysis. In such a short book he is unable to give each topic the detail and attention it deserves.So, I finally got to the crux of his argument. Art is the result of sexual selection. I think it best if I allow Dutton to speak for himself on this subject. What I think his ideas pare down to is that language, music, eventually the visual arts developed from a need to demonstrate to the opposite sex our fitness levels. When choosing a "mate" females look for someone who possesses the ability to provide for us - first, by being physically strong and able to protect us, and second by having considerable resources for us to live comfortably, which also suggests fitness, since these people will survive over those without resources. Men (again this is only the basic element of Dutton's arguments) look for women who will be able to give birth and carry on strong genes for the survival of the species - ie. women with wide childbearing hips - which explains the number of tiny-waisted, large hipped women in "beautiful" art. Leaving out some of the sexists implications in his arguments for present-day sexual selection, the idea that art forms represent early courtship "calls" seems a bit of a stretch. Dutton's claim that because most art shows a waste of resources leading to the assumptions that this potential mate has resources to waste (money, time, skills and knowledge that could be put to other more practical uses, but instead is applied to the relatively useless form of artistic creation) also seems ... well out-to-lunch. I slightly agree with the argument that art forms (music, literature and visual) give us a glimpse into the imaginative mind of the creator/author a response to the intrinsic desire to intimately know and understand our fellow human beings. I think that Dutton claims this also as a pursuit of fitness - understanding each other leads to strong ability to survive. But I felt he did not explain or pursue it well enough. His comparison of art to a peacock's tail feathers - an attractive feature, but unnecessary except for indicating fitness for sexual selection - also seems slightly absurd. There was plenty of interesting facts in the book. And I feel I did learn a few things. But I don't really agree with Dutton's conclusions. It's not hard to believe we have an art instinct. Explaining it well and convincingly is the challenge. I would like someone with a strong knowledge of Darwin, evolution, and human biology to take a crack at it.
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OK I bagged this about 4/5 through. By that time I felt as though I'd gotten all I was going to get out of it. The author spends an inordinate amount of time correcting what he views as the mistakes of other anthropologists, mistakes that are not in the forefront of consideration for anyone who isn't also an anthropologist.Meanwhile the author's intense focus on Darwin for pretty much every reference to adaptation is exhausting, considering that biologists have advanced so far beyond the basic ideas Darwin presented, building on his work. It begins to feel like Creationist arguments against evolution, which also focus intensively on Darwin to the ignorance of every great advance in evolution since the 19th century. If EO Wilson is to be taken seriously, the author's Darwin-centered focus derives partly at least from what Wilson describes as the scattered and unfocused nature of anthropology as a field. If this is the case the author would have done well to approach this study more from a biological viewpoint. As it stands the author draws a number of interesting and plausible connections between evolution and art near the beginning of the book, some of them fairly obvious. Then he pretty much riffs on those ideas throughout the remainder of the book in the portions he did not devote to beating his fellow anthropologists about the face and neck.
—Terry
Does Dutton know that art is created during times of affluence? To suggest that since the birth of man, humans have been creating for the sake of creating is confounding. He toes the line: asserting ceramic bowls are somehow more than ceramic bowls. Skill and creative ability is present and necessary in some ancient crafts, and can represent the snapshot of a culture, making it important in its own right, but sometimes a bowl is still a fucking bowl! The idea that there is an over-arching, cross-cultural predisposition to an "Art Instinct" is laughable, and examining his work doesn't clarify his initial thesis either. His theories about the role of fiction and natural selection are interesting, but he never synthesizes the information. Instead, each chapter acts as a nebulous being, forever floating with interesting concepts without anything to anchor on. Sure, a few attempts are made, but to suggest that there is empirical evidence as to why people recognize and enjoy similar artistic principals is absurd. (sidenote: Does he know that Nickleback exists, and to some, are considered artistic geniuses?)
—dallasgirl41
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