Human Evolution and Pastoral Landscape
John Constable, Wivenhoe Park, Essex. 1816.
Take a close look at the painting, above. It's a pretty typical representation of an artistic subject matter that has been around nearly as long as human art has: the Pastoral Landscape. You've seen them -- beautiful green landscapes, with trees, pastures, maybe a lake or a stream, some gentle animals grazing peacefully. There are lots here at the DeYoung Museum. You've probably snapped photos yourself of something that looks kind of like this on vacation or during your travels.
The thing is, this particular form of landscape, with the trees, grass, water and peaceful (edible) animals is pretty universal. It seems to represent the favored landscape of humans from different eras and cultures across the globe. In fact, in 1993, two expatriate Russian artists, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, conducted a detailed worldwide poll, asking individuals and focus groups from all over what they would like to see a picture of -- interior or exterior, favorite colors, subject matter, what kinds of animals, etc. The result? Almost overwhelmingly consistent: people enjoyed seeing trees and pastures, calm waters, peaceful animals. Green and blue. A painting much liek the Constable, above (or any of the million other such paintings in art history).
Dennis Dutton, in his terrific book The Art Instinct, has a theory about why this is the case. He believes such artistic preferences are our evolutionary inheritance: they're hardwired into our brains. He argues that our earliest ancestors -- the primates who left the African Jungles to start living on the encroaching grasslands -- would have sought a landscape that looks more or less just like this: a nearby forest for easy gathering of foodstuffs, fields or pastures green with fertility and close-cropped for easy hunting, nearby water for easy access and fishing.
I find this kind of touching. Even some of our most sophisticated aesthetic preferences can be traced to our earliest dreams of peace, fertility and security. What do you think? Can you flip through the pictures on your phone and find any landscapes that look something like this?
The thing is, this particular form of landscape, with the trees, grass, water and peaceful (edible) animals is pretty universal. It seems to represent the favored landscape of humans from different eras and cultures across the globe. In fact, in 1993, two expatriate Russian artists, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, conducted a detailed worldwide poll, asking individuals and focus groups from all over what they would like to see a picture of -- interior or exterior, favorite colors, subject matter, what kinds of animals, etc. The result? Almost overwhelmingly consistent: people enjoyed seeing trees and pastures, calm waters, peaceful animals. Green and blue. A painting much liek the Constable, above (or any of the million other such paintings in art history).
Dennis Dutton, in his terrific book The Art Instinct, has a theory about why this is the case. He believes such artistic preferences are our evolutionary inheritance: they're hardwired into our brains. He argues that our earliest ancestors -- the primates who left the African Jungles to start living on the encroaching grasslands -- would have sought a landscape that looks more or less just like this: a nearby forest for easy gathering of foodstuffs, fields or pastures green with fertility and close-cropped for easy hunting, nearby water for easy access and fishing.
I find this kind of touching. Even some of our most sophisticated aesthetic preferences can be traced to our earliest dreams of peace, fertility and security. What do you think? Can you flip through the pictures on your phone and find any landscapes that look something like this?