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Chapter 4 The Universality of the Arts in Human Life Ellen Dissanayake ONE OF THE most striking features of human societies, from the Palaeolithic to the present, is their prodigious involvement with the arts. In fact, most of what we know of past societies is revealed by their plastic or visual arts—cave wall paintings and engravings, pyramids and other tombs, temples, palaces, cathedrals, Buddhist stupas, ceramics, carvings, and stone sculptures both monumental and small.Although dance, music, dramatic stories , and body decoration seldom leave traces, we can assume that they too were widely practiced from early times. Like visual arts, they are prominent today in every society of the world so that our species’ taxonomic name could just as well be aestheticus (artistic) as sapiens (wise). Indeed, a case could be made that we are more aestheticus than sapiens.Yet isn’t it strange that our artistic nature, this indelible characteristic of our species, is not part of our general thinking about who we are? Even archaeologists and other social scientists, who should know how arty a species we are, usually regard human art not in its own right as the biologically distinctive and noteworthy characteristic that it is but rather as evidence of an ability to make and use symbols or as an indication of human intelligence or degree of cultural development. Perhaps one reason for this art-blindness is that the modern concept of art is confused.We don’t know art when we see it.To some, art refers to things that are rare and valuable—made by geniuses and sanctified by their presence in museums. Others scoff that art is a kind of pretentious folderol that most people quite obviously manage to live without. The close association today between art and commerce also raises suspicion or hostility regarding what is legitimately art, as does the work of some artists who deliberately intend to disturb, challenge, and provoke. How should we regard art? As an ornament ? A sacred calling? A political tool? A token of commerce? Intimations of sacredness, beauty, privilege, and refinement continue to cling to the idea of 61 Chap-04.qxd 2/25/08 3:40 PM Page 61 art like wisps of mist shrouding a tree’s higher reaches. Often more evident, however, is the trashy clutter at ground level—the less estimable associations of commodification, provocation, charlatanry, fickleness, and vulgarity.What is art, anyway? And why does it matter? I suggest that we can best understand human art—what it is and what has made it universal and necessary—by taking a species-centered view.That is, if we look at the arts as they have manifested themselves from the earliest millennia of our species, it becomes indisputable that they have been pervasive and integral to our nature and remain so today. As early namers of our species recognized, humans are indeed universally technological (Homo faber, or tool-using). We have also been called political (H. hierarchicus), commercial (H. oeconomicus), and playful (H. ludens).We also use language, form families, develop intimate social relationships, strive for status, create and engage in rituals , and hold moral beliefs.What we don’t realize is that pervading all these practices that make us human are the arts. Just as fish are unaware of water because it is the element in which they exist, we are oblivious to our dependence on and immersion in the arts. What Do We Mean When We Talk About Art? As just suggested, an important reason for our artistic myopia is that the word “art” means such different things to different people.“Art” may refer to skill (fineness and complexity of execution, cunning, or craft); artifice (artificial rather than natural); beauty and pleasure; the sensual quality of things (color, shape, sound); the immediate fullness of sense experience (as contrasted with habituated, unregarded experience); ordering or harmonizing (organizing , shaping, pattern making, interpreting; giving unity); innovative tendencies (exploration, originality, creation, invention, seeing things a new way, surprise ); the urge to beautify (embellish, adorn, display); self-expression (presenting one’s personal view of the world); communication (a special kind of language, symbolizing); serious and important concerns (significance, meaning); make-believe (fantasy, play, wish fulfillment, illusion, imagination); and heightened existence (emotion,entertainment,ecstasy,self-transcendence).Depending on the circumstances, art has been called orderly and disorderly, immediate and eternal, particular and general,Apollonian and Dionysian, emotional and intellectual , immanent and ideal.The concept seems inexhaustible. Evidently art at times is and/or is concerned...

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