Mary Harris

“Paleoanthropsychobiological” describes the view of Dissanayake, who also coined the term, of the Western idea of art. The author defines this view by describing it as belief that “art must be viewed as an inherent universal (or biological) trait of human species, as normal as language, sex, sociability, aggression or any other characteristics of human nature”. In the most basic sense, the term means that we much not think of art separate from ourselves, it is something that is within us.

The human desire to make things “special” relates to both art and human survival. Dissanayake proves this by showing how characteristics from our “hunter-gatherer milieu” are still extremely prevalent in human nature today. By making things special or different, makes something distinct from the everyday, making it more noticeable. The example Dissanayake uses is that the rabbit would not know if there was a predator looming if the “snapping twig or sudden shadow” was not distinct form the everyday. Just as the twig or shadow makes a predator distinct or different, since the beginning of art humans have been using “form and color” to draw attention and separate their drawings for anything else.

Throughout time the concept or idea that surrounds what art is has changed dramatically. Dissanayake provides multiple theories of art throughout western European history, three of them being modernism, postmodernism and art for life’s sake. Modernism predominantly took place in the 18^th century and with it came the idea that “there is a special frame of mind for appreciating works of art” that was “disinterested” from ourselves. Postmodernism, which came about around the end of the 20^th century, pushed the idea that “artists… do not see the world in any singularly privileged or objectively truthful way” and that everybody sees art in a different way depending on their own personal experiences. Lastly the art for life’s sake theory is one prevalent today and is a mixture of modernism and postmodernism. That is it involves the task to “make special” and requires that “art is a necessary behavior of human beings”, just as talking and socializing are.

The statements, “species center view”, “dismissal, ignorance, irrelevance and exclusivity” and “propensity to make special” could all be used to describe most human attitudes in today’s society. We believe we are the most important species, which makes us special, and allows us to believe most other things are irrelevant and separate from us. This sounds like a perfect description of human nature in today’s society but these statements were actually used by the author Ellen Dissanayake to describe human’s perception of art today. Just as we decided that even though we are not the only species on the planet, we are the most important and special, humans have picked certain pieces of art that stand above the rest.

A question that can stem from this is whether the need to make things special is an innate human quality or is art the “behavior of making special”? Many people choose certain pieces of artwork due the feeling they get from it or the piece made something “more memorable and significant” therefore making it special. Observing art is a time when a person can truly embrace their feelings and judge a piece of work honestly with no filters. Art is meant to evoke an opinion, no matter how brutally honest. There is no equation that makes one piece of art better than another but somehow conclusions are drawn on what is good or bad. The differentiation between what is art and what is natural is a difficult one. Art is a very broad term than can be applied to mostly everything, depending on the definition one uses. Dissanayake says, “Art is a normal and necessary behavior of human beings” therefore making it part of every day life blurring the lines between what can be made special and what should be innately special. With art, humans are the viewer, the decider and the judge giving us all of the control. We have very much related this to our everyday lives seeing the world as art and we are just here as merely choosers of what is special and what is not.