The Ted Talk led by Dennis Dutton encompassed only a fraction of the reasons behind the existence of art and, furthermore, the survival of art. Dennis starts out by addressing the Darwinian principle and the different types of ways we interpret the idea of beauty. At the end of his excerpt he made a statement regarding that what we perceive as beauty relies heavily on that of our ancestors, which I do not agree with. Yes I do see the connection between the early homosapiens first generating the feeling and emotions towards seeing something they felt had a gravitational pull on their soul. However, I do not agree with the idea of myself looking at an object that I perceive as beautiful stemming from my early ancestors. Understanding the brief overview of neurophysiology, it is essentially the firing of neurons when activating visual stimulus by looking at an object, or in this case an art piece, which then relays electrical activity onto the emotional areas of your brain causing you to feel happy, sad, or unfavorable to the work. Yes I do see the argument where there could potentially be the case of evolution that our minds are wired in a fashion where we have learned to feel a speck of emotion when visualizing a piece of art from either an innate feature or from societal influences.

In the piece by Ellen Dissanayake, she makes it a point to address the idea that our early ancestors viewed art was an early outlet for survival (p.16). As mentioned before, I can see and understand the correlation of interpreting and formulating emotions when seeing art from our ancestors. Ellen also makes a point in which I semi-agree with on page 19 of her excerpt that “there is no appreciation of art without interpretation.” I disagree with this as feel as though people may be inclined to appreciate the idea of art on the surface. If they posses the ability to be thoughtful and realize the amount of work and effort the artist put in to express their ideology and emotions through a medium. On the other hand, I agree with this statement because I do feel that in order to really appreciate someone’s masterpiece you should take the time to fully engage yourself in their work and formulate your own opinions and ideas or guess what the artist was trying to portray. There really is no real concrete definition for art, and through evolution of ideology, there are infinite forms of art that seem to be continuously evolving and altering our thoughts in the process.