In this article, the author Ellen Dissanayake coined this term of palaeoanthropsychobiological. She said in her article, palaeoanthropsychobiological arises from an unfamiliar perspective. She also gives us 3 point of that. First, art encompasses all of human history. Second, it includes all human societies. Third, that it accounts for the fact that art is a psychological or emotional need and has psychological or emotional effects. She also mention that art must be viewed as an inherent universal (or biological) trait of the human species. (page 15).
In this article, Ellen said that “The species-centered view of a combines modalism’s proclamation that art is of supreme value and a source for heightened personal experience with post modalism’s insistence that it belongs to everyone and is potentially all around us. It does this by thinking of art making and experiencing as a human behavior.”(p.22) From this sentence, I realize that the author try to define art is related with people’s life. Art is everywhere, and I think “making special” is a reflection of people’s opinion of art. From her article we know that people try to make things special. This means that people have their own opinion that how to express art. This is the progress of art. People also like beautiful things. The realization of art is clearer and clearer from people’s behavior.
In page 16, she said in the medieval times, and it is the period of Renaissance, artists replace God-centered with man-centered concems. The second period is modernism. Like she said “This was that there is a special frame of mind for appreciating works of art- a “disinterested” attitude that is separate from one’s own personal interest in the object. Its utility or its social or religious ramifications.” This is the progress that people how to appreciate an artwork. The third period is postmodernism, “the assumption that interpretation is indispensable to appreciating and even identifying artworks”. “To claim that one can appreciate works from alien cultures is an imperialistic act of appropriation- molding them to one’s own standards while blatantly dismissing or ignoring that standards of their makers and users.” This period, people improve the appreciation of art to another high level.