book: art & intiamcy

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Art & Intimacy: How the Arts Began

Ellen Dissanayake
University of Washington Press
2000

Written from evolutionary anthropology perspective on the origins of art and love. The origins of art is in the rhythm and modalities of love between a mother and her child.

Thesis:

It is in the inborn capacity and need for mutuality between mother and her child that four other essential human capacities are enfolded or embedded and gradually emerge. Mother-child relationship is the prototype for love and intimacy. The mother-child mutuality contains and influences the capacities for: belonging to and acceptance by a social group, finding and making meaning, importance of making things with the hands, and making art/rituals. It is human nature to love, to belong, to find meaning in life and to make art to elaborate this meaning.

Naturalistic Aesthetics:

An aesthetic experience addresses the evolutionary psycho-biology explained above. Four criteria can be used to assess aesthetics:

1. accessibility coupled with strikingness: art has to access our evolutionary sensory and cognitive range.
2. tangible relevance: art pertains to things people care about and address universal needs for belonging, meaning, and competence.
3. evocative resonance: deep symbolic importance and meaning.
4. satisfying fullness: a state of sheer satisfaction