Anatomical Evolution and the Aesthetic Response to Figurative Art

Introduction

With regard to general aesthetic education, the university liberal studies curriculum is designed to provide a balance of the humanities and sciences. Beyond offering a balanced curriculum, there is the current trend for universities to offer a liberal studies curriculum that interfaces the sciences and the humanities. A prime example of this is the emerging discipline of evolutionary aesthetics, which is founded on the idea of explaining art and the aesthetic experience in terms of evolutionary concepts. Evolutionary aesthetics is developing, has great potential, and is being increasingly acknowledged by the aesthetic community.¹

In keeping with the growing field of evolutionary aesthetics, the primary aim of this paper is to apply pertinent ideas from evolutionary biology to present a novel point of view regarding the aesthetic response. An additional objective is to demonstrate a relationship between hominin anatomical evolution and what artists do when they create works of art of the human form. For the limited arguments presented here, the focus of this paper is restricted to figurative art. The art works presented, as illustrations, are identifiable as human figures, albeit some of them portray abnormal anatomical proportions.

While the main position of this paper touches upon the emotional response to an artwork, it contributes nothing to inquiries about art criticism, or the validity of cultivated aesthetic judgments, or the idea of correct taste, and says little about the necessity to describe an artwork in aesthetic terms. Nor does it say anything about an artwork’s ability to meet the true standard of good or bad or mediocre or whether it is comparatively superior. It is presumed that the paintings and sculptures presented here have the status of artworks. The pieces are located in museums, are highly valued by curators and art critics, and have been put forth for the appreciation of the public at large. The museum pieces of Western and African figurative art that are presented have attracted the attention of the public and have been judged favorably by the public. Therefore, the figurative artworks were not chosen to be judged as works of art but rather as examples providing prima facie evidence of how artists in their works emphasize anatomical traits. The chosen pieces, although necessarily limited in number, are representative of a high number of artworks that emphasize anatomical proportions.

The assertions of this paper are presented within the context of the ability of a figurative artwork to elicit a pleasurable response involving a heightened state of perception and emotion within the viewer. Traditionally, this type of spontaneous experience is referred to as an “aesthetic response.” Although rooted in the history of aesthetic philosophy, defining the aesthetic response can be somewhat cursory in that the full implication of the established philosophical and psychological explorations regarding beauty and the aesthetic is difficult to bring to bear by a simple definition. What is presented here is an evolutionary/paleoanthropological rationale for what artists do and also as an explanation for some aspects of the aesthetic experience. The museum pieces illustrated in Figure 1A and Figure 1B are looked upon as works of art, and although quite different in their anatomical

Figure 1A.

Female figure (illustrates highly exaggerated derived anatomical traits); early Cycladic (Dokathismata type); about 2400–2300 B.C.; marble; Naxos Island; Menil’s Cycladic collection, Menil Collection, Houston, Texas.

Figure 1B.

Female figure (combinative in that it depicts both highly exaggerated primitive and derived anatomical traits); African, Ivory Coast; 19– 20th centuries; Baule wood sculpture, H. 25–15/16 in. (65.9 cm); Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979, (1979.206.113), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY.

proportions, both pieces would be expected to elicit within the viewer an aesthetic response. Since antiquity, one of the enduring questions of philosophical aesthetics has been, what is it about a work of art that it can generate within the viewer an aesthetic response? In the context of the debate of what constitutes an aesthetic experience, this paper makes...