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the survey by Komar and Melamid
A new book, "The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution" by Denis Dutton, is getting raves reviews. It talks about, well, the evolutionary explanation for art.
One intriguing study made by a couple of artists, that the author says supports his thesis , asks people from ten countries what kind of landscapes they preferred. The majority said "a landscape with trees and open areas, water, human figures and animals" [1], which had savanna-like qualities.
Dutton attributes this to people reminiscing about their ancient, pre-historic landscapes from which they evolved.
Now, this seems to me to be a far-fetched idea. How do thousands of people in a survey have some remote part of their brain store a landscape in which they have never lived, but in which their ancestors apparently did?
What about those landscapes as being compositionally good, or even superior, in the minds of these thousands of ordinary folk? I remember looking at the "abstract" painting of an especially talented 5 year-old, and was surprised at her great sense of composition and color. Perhaps there is something intrinsic in humans that recognizes a well-composed piece. Perhaps there is an "art" gene. Some can produce it, others (the majority) can recognize it. That seems more likely than reminiscing about the "paradise lost" of our past.
[1]Art, Landscape, and Pleistocene Life, Denis Dutton
