Art and the Anthropologists (pre-publication version)

AVANT, Vol. VIII, No. 1/2017, 2017

When Władysław Tatarkiewicz wrote that there are only two things that can be said about art: that it is a human activity, not a product of nature, and that it is a conscious activity (or its product), adding that every statement about art different from the ones mentioned above was always finally overthrown (Tatarkiewicz, 1980, p. 37), he probably did not think that the first claim could be questioned by anyone. In the following paper, I will trace the history of observations of "artistic behaviors" that were made by animal ethol-ogists and then processed by evolutionary art philosophers who may lead to the hypothesis about the validity of assigning artistic abilities to animals. In respect to this article is aimed at a wide audience. I will also demonstrate that the question: whether, and in what sense, animals create art is in fact a question about a definition of art that could include this type of intentional animal acts.

Configurations, 2023

Do animals other than humans make what some humans call "art"? What might other animals' graphic and aesthetic behaviors reveal about art's "origins"? In this article, I critically examine the multidisciplinary histories of attempts to answer these questions through two cases: one on nonhuman primate painting and drawing studies, and the other on writing about bowerbirds. Rather than weigh in on the questions myself, I assess the ethical and intellectual stakes and risks the questions pose, particularly given the often cursorily defined significance of "art" in the literature, and the anthropocentrism, and Eurocentrism that have lurked in its discourses. More than this, I suggest that while these are questions for which humans should not be assured they can find a definitive answer, they are nonetheless revealing about the ontology and epistemology of art.

American Anthropologist, 2008

Probably more than any other British anthropologist, Roy Ellen is associated with the study of ethnobiology; his has also long ranked among the leading names in the field. This collection of papers, all previously published between 1975 and 1998, fairly represents Ellen's varied contributions to folk zoology and botany. The chapters also demonstrate differences between Ellen's approach and those of others, particularly approaches associated with Brent Berlin and his collaborators. Largely in contrast to these, Ellen has always taken a relativist, holistic, and something of a cultural particularist view of classificatory usage, investigating the development and application of plant and animal categories within the totality of the culture and social life of the people to whom they relate: in this instance, particularly the Nuaulu of eastern Indonesia. Ellen has also for a long time advocated a view of classification as a dynamic process, rather than a product or relatively static component of cultural systems; hence the phrase in the book's subtitle, "classifying behaviour." Yet Ellen has never been an extreme relativist, and, indeed, he accepts much of the basic framework of the intellectualist and universalist position on folk taxonomy most closely identified with Berlin. At the same time, he has always offered detailed and ethnographically well-informed perspectives on particular cases, critically refining applications of panhuman folk taxonomic schema to these. Two of the chapters (republished essays), for example, involve a critical review of the notion of "life-form" taxa as it may apply (or not apply) to indigenous ethnobotanical categories. Focusing on Nuaulu ways of classifying marsupials and the cassowary, another paper (in fact the earliest, republished here as ch. 4) explores how classification can vary according to practical and social and conceptual contexts. In this case, the partly religious notion of food prohibitions is brought to bear on the way edible species are classified, and as this might suggest, single-named folk zoological categories are shown to participate both in what have been distinguished as "general purpose" and "special purpose" classificatory schema.

In this paper I discuss the issue of the adequacy of the concept of art and evolutionary explanations. Although evolutionary approaches to art and aesthetics gain big audience there’s no any established position in the field. Also, the concept of art has evolved through a series of definitions, often mutually exclusive. Denis Dutton’s ‘cluster concept’ of art is a not entirely successful attempt at joining the analytical definition of art with evolutionary approaches. Not entirely successful does not mean false. Dutton and Ellen Dissanayake manage to formulate a convincing argument showing that art constitutes a pre-conceptual natural category of human existence. The folk concept of art can be considered as a kind of bridge between the analytic definition of art and the ethological approach to the study of art behaviors, presented among others by Ellen Dissanayake and criticized, just only recently, by Stephen Davies.

Acta Terrae Septemcastrensis, 2009

This reflection on art and prehistory introduced several author's anthropological concepts on origin of art and its function in prehistory. Initial conceptual construct is the difference between aesthetic and aesthetical cultural views, respectively of aesthetic as a scientific theory (= aesthetics in singular) and aesthetics (plural) as the pleasing appearance or effect of things. The aesthetic view empowers and liberates culture while aesthetical view may limit it. The aesthetic view can be destructured while the aesthetical view needs to be proved. From the perspectives of prehistory, the socioanthropological power-prestige model does not allow to analyze the aesthetic view in its completeness and connectiveness as an essential enculturational construct. It may better explain the interrelation between socialization and aesthetic/aesthetical view. The cultural relation to rocks, minerals, clays and pigments was in fact relation of artists (understood as creative people) to nature in order to interact and create cultural products that in turn connected the people and nature. The art was invented in particular, to connect the gradually self-developing social world with the nature and in such way to make the world look united and complex.

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 2004

Art and Human Nature I. INTRODUCTION common to humankind, something bred in the bone, so to speak. The concept of human nature unavoidably The reasoning here is straightforward, implies the existence of nearly universal regunamely, that the same global effect is apt to larities across the human species-regularities, have the same cause. If that cause is not ultimlike language use, most probably explicable in ately cultural diffusion from a single source, terms of biology and evolutionary psychology. then we must look elsewhere-to enduring fea-Thus, linking the arts to human nature implicitly tures of the human organism as it has evolved to promises to connect the arts to long-term, engage recurring adaptive challenges.2 Or, to enduring, nearly universal features of the put the matter more simply, we must look to human frame. That is, if art is rooted in human human nature as at least part of the explanation nature, then it is a response, at least in part, to of why we have art as we know it. elements of our evolved cognitive, perceptual, Moreover, it is not just the fact that we find and emotive architecture that are either necesart distributed globally that suggests a considerasary for social life, or conducive to it, or that are tion of its evolutionary heritage. There is also side-effects from features that are. the related phenomenon that people of different For some, this will sound scarcely exceptioncultures are able to recognize, at rates that are able, since we are prone to say that virtually hardly random, the products of other cultures as every known human culture has what we call artworks. As Stephen Davies notes, "I am arts, including narrative (oral and written), imageimpressed by how accessible to Westerners is making, carving, whittling, sculpting, chanting, much sub-Saharan music, Chinese painting, and dance, song, decoration, acting, mime, and so woven carpets from the Middle East."3 And the on.' And inasmuch as this is a feature of human same sort of cross-cultural recognizability can societies, exemplified across the species, we be observed of non-Westerners in regard to our would expect to find that its explanation-like art; Western mass culture could not be so easily the explanation of our linguistic capacitiesexported were it otherwise. goes rather deep, to something inherent in This, of course, is not to say that the citizens human nature. of disparate societies grasp the significance in Although every known culture appears to their full cultural complexity of artworks from possess art, it is improbable that this can be other societies. Rather, the point is that, to an explained in terms of art's originating in a sinarresting degree, Europeans can recognize a gle location at one time and then being dissemstatue of Ganesha as an artwork without being inated gradually therefrom. Rather, art seems to able to know its symbolic import. Appreciating have sprung up independently in different the meaning of such a figurine, needless to say, locales and at different times, often apart from requires contextual or background knowledge outside influences. But if the worldwide distriof the sort that is available to the untutored bution of art cannot be explained by cultural Westerner only from a participant of the relediffusion, then the alternative that recommends vant culture, or by way of an anthropologist, or itself is that art has its origins in something an art historian. Nevertheless, it remains a The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 62:2 Spring 2004 96 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism striking fact that we can recognize-to a perhistorical research on the arts need not be seen haps surprising extent-the artworks of other as locked in a zero-sum struggle. Both kinds of cultures, as other peoples can recognize ours, research have important contributions to make even where we are unable to decipher them or to our understanding of art and aesthetic experidiscern their historical significance.4 But how is ence, not only in the sense that sometimes one this possible? of these perspectives is better suited than the Again, a very attractive hypothesis is that we other to explain certain aspects of the phenohave an inbred capacity to detect the expressive mena, but also in the sense that sometimes these behavior of our conspecifics as it is inscribed in perspectives can mutually inform one another. the sensuous media of the traditional arts. We Indeed, I hope to show that in some cases may not know what a tribal decoration means, psychology, including evolutionary psychobut we know that, by means of it, its maker logy, may enrich historical explanations. In intends to communicate something special, order to motivate this claim, I will try to indisomething that is worth remarking on.5 cate how aspects of the development of certain Of course, it is not my contention that every mass art forms, such as film and TV, can be artwork is recognizable as such by anyone from fruitfully discussed psychologically in terms of any culture. We would not predict that just anythe ways in which they address human nature. one from anywhere could recognize many of Duchamp's readymades as artworks. Many from our own culture have been tripped up by II. THE CASE AGAINST HUMAN NATURE these examples, though, it should be noted, that their manner of display ought to have given Before attempting to substantiate the usefulness onlookers food for thought. of discussing art in relation to human nature, it Still, to a rather surprising degree, the artwill perhaps be instructive to review briefly some works of foreign societies are cross-culturally of the reasons that specialists in the humanities recognizable as artworks and that calls for have had for resisting this approach.6 Here my explanation. And since the phenomenon is crosspurpose is not to reject the many deep insights cultural, and not readily explicable in terms of that cultural-historical approaches have yielded. merely cultural diffusion, the invocation of human Nor is it to urge that cultural approaches be nature appears irresistible. Moreover, since this supplanted across the board by ones informed recognizability, where it occurs, seems most by evolutionary psychology and cognitive scilikely with what can be called the traditional ence. Rather, my point is that cultural-historical arts, the suggestion that human nature plays an approaches may be profitably supplemented, important role in our explanation here appears especially in the explanation of certain artistic apposite, since the relevant, enduring features phenomena, by talking about human nature. of our cognitive, perceptual, and emotive archi-Earlier I claimed that the appeal to human tecture were in place when the more traditional nature seems unobjectionable on the face of it, forms of art and expression emerged. since it appears that almost every known culture Nevertheless, despite the prima facie case possesses art. Undeniably, this art comes in that can be made that art has something to do many different forms. However, the diversity of with human nature-conceived of in terms of art across different societies should no more our enduring, evolved cognitive, perceptual, discourage us from looking for a common cause and emotive architecture-it is also true that for here than the diversity of different languages over two decades, researchers in the humanities deters us from attempting to locate the human have resisted universalizing modes of analysis, capacity for language in our common human such as evolutionary psychology and cognitive nature. That is, where we are dealing with cogscience, preferring, almost exclusively, to hisnate phenomena, it pays to look for a common toricize artistic phenomenon in the conviction cause. that, as they say, "it's culture all the way But many in the humanities today are apt to down." question my first premise. They will deny that In contrast, in this essay I want to stress that art is universal, thereby vitiating the grounds for biologically informed research and culturalan appeal to human nature. They may point out,

Documenta Praehistorica XXXIX: 285-309, 2012

Bovine iconography is one of the most important components for understanding social identities among Neolithic Vinča culture communities. It is believed that both wild and domesticated cattle were introduced into Vinča culture symbolic practice as one of the most powerful and profound metaphors of human perception of the world. I argue that the use of bovine iconography was socially structured, as was the maintenance of animals, and that the vast corpus of bovine iconography should be considered in terms of actual human-animal relationships.

The term " Eurasian animal-style art" was  rst developed in the early twentieth century by Rostovtzeff when he identi ed the widespread pattern of artistic motifs that included realistic depictions of cervids, often portrayed on the tips of their hooves (as if running or leaping), horses, felines, and the frequent combination of various animal body elements (real and imagined) into new forms that portrayed metamorphosis, hybridism, and predator-prey dynamics. In considering this pattern of animal symbolism, it is important to emphasize the general evolution of human-animal representations produced by pastoralist and agro-pastoralist societies in the steppe zone and to consider how this may differ from such representations and their development within the state-level urban settings of the Near East, the Mediterranean, and temperate Europe. Over the past  fteen years, several scholars have emphasized the importance of the socio-economic relationship that existed between the urban states of the south and the pastoralists and agro-pastoralists of the northern steppe zone, de ned as a core-periphery dynamic . Certainly, archaeological evidence does indicate the diffusion of certain forms of material culture and iconography between these two regions, particularly during the Iron Age. Human-animal imagery and the Master or Mistress of Animals also are known from the Greek colonies along the north coast of the Black Sea. Ornaments recovered from the so-called priestess' tomb in the Great Bliznitsa barrow provide an excellent example of this . This barrow was excavated in the second half of the nineteenth century in an area north of Lake Tsukur on the Taman Peninsula between the Black Sea and the Azov Sea (see MINNS 1971 for description). Sites such as these are connected with the Greek colonies established along the northern coast in the mid- fth century BC that contributed to Scythian-Greek contact and colonial processes in the region. Nevertheless, it is important to move beyond the simple mapping of the movement of objects, people, and symbolism between what are envisaged as "core" and "peripheral" areas. Identifying and explaining some of the social processes and cultural boundaries that may have facilitated and/or discouraged the diffusion and appropriation of artistic elements and their related symbolism between regions and the groups inhabiting them are key in considering the relationship of art agency phenomena to social development and change among steppe societies during the Bronze and Iron Ages. While the appearance in the Black Sea region of the Master of Animals iconography can be traced to Greek expansion and colonization, this style of iconography did not spread into the Eurasian steppe zone in any perceptible form. It is important, therefore, to consider not only the speci c historical contexts and social relations that produce such art but also how and why such traditions change through time as well as why they do not. While some scholars may consider it inappropriate to consider such developments an "evolution" of art, art agency exists within a realm of social practice that is multivariable in nature and conditioned by traditional cultural practices through time and the rearticulation of meaning and use that both draws upon and contributes to the art agency itself within speci c historical settings. Such a view moves us beyond a simple focus on the aesthetics and semantics of art and places more emphasis on how art is both produced and consumed in connection with the manipulation of art, the cultural values surrounding material objects, and the construction of iconography for social action and intention. Such an anthropological perspective of art and its agency was strongly argued for by Alfred Gell in several works (GELL , 1998, wherein he highlighted the intentionality of art and its ability to extend the agency of its creator into various social  elds and networks of interaction.

Studies of human evolution are paramount in terms of answering why we have culture and make art. Without doubt, research into our prehistoric ancestors, their habits, minds, and manners brings us closer to understanding ourselves, our cultural diversity, our social relations, and our group identities. This issue of ASEBL features a paper by Anthony Lock, who digs into that past to help explain our artistic behaviors and their possible origins. Following his paper are illuminating comments by experts in the field, concluding with a response by Lock.

Theatricality and the Arts, 2024

Engaging influential work in evolutionary aesthetics, this paper contends that narrowly naturalistic approaches in the philosophy of art give little insight into human aesthetic practices because they cannot account for the role played in them by self-consciousness. It criticises Denis Dutton’s attempt to explain human aesthetic behaviours via evolutionary biology, and the inferences he makes about human art based on parallels with animal displays. To bring out the philosophical problems with Dutton’s approach, the paper invokes three stories on display in human art and the aesthetic lives of animals: a passage from Kant’s Critique of Judgment about a nightingale song faked by a landlord for his unwitting guests; a passage from Darwin’s Descent of Man about the delight peacocks take in their displays; and a passage from Michael Fried’s Absorption and Theatricality on the problem of display in eighteenth century French painting. The stories bring out profound differences in our aesthetic responses to nature and to human art, indicating that while display may be central to the aesthetic lives of many animals, only for self-conscious ones can that very fact become problematic, spurring distinct strategies for contending with it. The paper concludes by arguing that Hegel’s philosophy can help us make sense of the complications self-consciousness introduces into our aesthetic lives.