The Art Instinct: How Old Are Our Muses?

"Pleistocene" isn't a word you hear in everyday conversation, or in any conversation. Even more rarely is it used in the same conversation as "art," unless you are talking about the 16,000 year old cave paintings at Lascaux, or the 9,000 year old Venus of Willendorf. Pleistocene refers to the stone age, that period of time in our ancestral past when men started thinking and acting like men, and a time critical to Dutton's theory of "Darwinian Aesthetics." The distance between our time and ancient Greece is roughly 500 generations, our distance from the Pleistocene more than 80,000 generations, yet the genetic specters of our past continue to haunt and inform our creative spirit.

Denis Dutton, professor of art philosophy and author of The Art Instinct, proposes that our modern aesthetic sensibilities trace their attributes back these 1.6 million years to a time of primordial sophistication. Aware of his controversial stance, Dutton uses a combination of thought experiments, anecdotal evidence, his own field research, and the full extent of his art theory vocabulary to make it clear that, like our sharp canines and carnivorous inclinations, our love of art is instinctual. Could our propensity for screaming at a rock concert, our love of Chekhov, our idolization of Homer, our disdain for Duchamp's Fountain, and even our admiration for figure skaters follow from a long process of natural selection?

The revelation is uncomfortable at first, and for those of us invested in the humanities, it can be unpleasant to hear that our sublime experience of art is simply a result of natural and sexual selection. Hearing that music is an extension of vocal mating rituals, or that storytelling a way of passing on hunt strategies doesn't get on well with our idea of art as the biggest thing still separating us from the animals. Profane and blasphemous are words that come to mind, but by the last page the idea that we've somehow shaped our species by selecting for values of creativity, originality, and beauty isn't entirely pessimistic. Dutton assuages opposition with the assurance that humans are the only species to actively select for their own preferences, and that unlike animals, we are "self-domesticating." In any case, these are facts, and, as Dutton says, "this is a truth we are unable to ignore." Our ideas about beauty are universal, and, in Dutton's opinion, they follow from the environmental stresses of a long psychological past.

The book opens with an influential 1993 study funded by the Nation Institute that polled approximately two billion participants worldwide. The global effort showed a cross-cultural preference for some very specific, and very chilling qualities sought in a "good" painting. The study found that an undeniable majority of people prefer art reminiscent of the African Savanna. Incidentally, Africa was also our Pleistocene residence - our ancestral gallery. Envision this scene: Low, open spaces, expansive grasslands interrupted by thickets and trees. Blue water, or a dried streambed where water used to run, smoothes the foreground nearby. In the distance, you see the horizon, far away and unimpeded. Animals and birds dart between the trees, lighting on the fruits and flowers of various greens. If you feel the "landscape longing," you're not alone. This, according to the "Savanna Hypothesis," is the dream landscape, a cross-cultural vision from Iceland to Oceania.

After his opening study, Dutton's argument tends toward wit more often than hard science. Evolutionary psychology backs many of the book's suppositions, skirting the fact that this relatively new field is still highly suspect. Intuition strongly agrees with Dutton on most points, but the facts aren't yet copious enough to advance Dutton's claims beyond conjecture. Demonstrating that love, jealousy, lust, and pity were traits favorable to surviving a prehistoric world is one thing (and hard enough), but showing that sitting cross-legged in front of a cave painting playing a bone-pipe is favorable to survival is another. Despite some philosophical digressions, Dutton maintains a charming style that makes the science perfectly digestible.

Dutton's claim that the satisfactions derived from art are primal is not a claim that our capacity to enjoy art is artificial, base, or meaningless. His battle lines aren't drawn between evolutionists and spiritualists, but between evolutionists and institutional art snobs. The Art Instinct is a welcome step back from critics who think that enjoying the subject of a painting is novice, or that pure aesthetic emotion comes from contemplation of abstract forms, as stated by Veblen. Dutton gives us a hereditary license to enjoy art for the practical, individual, and expressionistic, if not essential role it plays in our lives. That our attraction to superfluous extravagance - diamond rings, Victorian furniture, bouquets of flowers - is primal does not bar sublimity. The last chapters deal with issues less evolutionary than theoretical and ideological. Problems of artistic intention, forgery, and Dada are intriguing, but distract from his argument more than they shape it.

Speculative as it is, The Art Instinct is critical to opening discussion of art in its biological relationship to the humanities. Perhaps biting off more than he can chew in 250 pages, Dutton's research reveals and refines new definitions of art - 12 core definitions. While he seeks to upend old doctrines and open new debates, he gives us hope that we are close to finally categorizing the artistic status of Marcel Duchamp's jabberwocky, the Fountain. Dutton reminds us that art is a continually evolving process, yet one rooted in humanity, and that "the unity of the arts emerges from the unity of mankind."