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Beauty, Pleasure, And Human Evolution
Bloomsbury Press
January 2009
On Sale: December 23, 2008
288 pages
ISBN: 1596914017
EAN: 9781596914018
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
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 understanding of the arts. The Art Instinct combines two fascinating and contentious
disciplines—art and evolutionary science—in a provocative
new work that will change forever the way we think about the
arts, from painting to literature to movies to pottery. Human tastes in the arts, Dutton argues, are evolutionary
traits, shaped by Darwinian selection. They are not, as the
past century of art criticism and academic theory would have
it, just “socially constructed.”Our love of beauty is
inborn, and many aesthetic tastes are shared across remote
cultures—just one example is the widespread preference for
landscapes with water and distant trees, like the savannas
where we evolved. Using forceful logic and hard evidence,
Dutton shows that we must premise art criticism on an
understanding of evolution, not on abstract “theory.” He
restores the place of beauty, pleasure, and skill as
artistic values. Sure to provoke discussion in scientific circles and uproar
in the art world, The Art Instinct offers radical new
insights into both the nature of art and the workings of the
human mind.
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