elemele

The exhibition Darwin: Art and the Search for Origins, running at the Shirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, Germany, looking at how artists responded in the century following the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species looks at how artists responded in the century following the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. One of the heros of the exhibit is Ernst Haeckel, German biologist and philosopher, famous for his “Art forms in nature”, who I’ve been writing about a few weeks ago in the context of vovlox font system. Now, I came across beautiful true story how he started to draw nature which was a profound input in Darwinian theory spreading all over the world. He was a talented and promising zoologist when his wife Anna Sethe died which made him abandon religion and direct his paths towards Darwinism. He was trying to recover by the Mediterranean seashore and while walking along the beach he noticed a jellyfish. Its delicate yellow tendrils reminded him of his wife’s braids and he started to draw them and named them “annasethe”. So he begun sketching and drawing marine life which revolutionized the 19th cent. understanding of the species. It’s that inspiring? This story made me take a closer look at the way we come to fresh ideas, the concept of serendipity and innovation in thinking, also in relation to neuroscience. Now working on that topic, so some thoughts soon, I hope.

The convergence and mutual influences of art and science has been of my interest for some time. This year we celebrate 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birthday and the most positive aspect of it is that many publishers are issuing books related to darwinism now ( …plus maybe anti-creationist debate arising more widely, but it’s a different topic:).

Denis Dutton in “The Art Instict” interprets Darwinism through sociobiology, the idea that social behavior is driven by genes. Are we prisoners of our genes or not? If that question answers irresponsible thinker, it it may reach the edges of extreme conservatism, which is the thesis of Jackie Wullschlager from Financial Times referring to Dutton, professor of aesthetic and philosophy. He believes that:” the evolution of Homo sapiens is not just a history of how we came to have acute colour vision, a taste for sweets and an upright gait. It is also a story of how we became a species obsessed with creating artistic experiences … from firelit caves to the continuous worldwide glow of television screens.”

And he gives some more picturesque examples to prove his thesis that we as species have a kind of “art instinct” = common taste deriving from our ancestor’s mind. Yeah! So much the thesis. Time for the proofs. “We like bright rolling landscapes, because they remind us of the African savannah where human beings evolved. Centuries of portraits illustrate our admiration for male height and vigour: Velázquez’s monarchs, for example. And: our predilection for female Coke-bottle figures that promise fertility, such as Botticelli’s Venus”. Too show that those “art insticts” are innate, he “falls back on Darwinian survival theories: The aesthetic, like the erotic, arises spontaneously as a source of pleasure in cultures across the globe,” he offers.

True, but while sex is essential to the continuation of the humankind, art is not. “Never mind, says Dutton. Art has “survival value” for the species because it increases “empathy, co-operation and social solidarity”, and therefore makes communities which practice it more likely to stay happy, healthy and reproductive.” Well, this clear thought that art is being made to make sex is a little bit too much for me. Or..?