ASEBL Journal – Volume 11 Issue 2, Spring 2015
Evolutionary Aesthetics, the Interrelationship Between Viewer
and Artist, and New Zealandism
Anthony Lock
Abstract
With the rise of evolutionary aesthetics in the last few decades, Ellen Dissanayake
and Denis Dutton have both suggested interpersonal relationships that evolved during late hominid development played an important role in the first practice of making art, and still do today because of our inherited psychology. I support an increasing role for evolutionary aesthetics in art theory by applying their ideas specifically to art from Dutton’s home, New Zealand. In particular, to see how evolutionary aesthetics can enhance Kiwi critic Hamish Keith’s concept of “New Zealandism”, the work of two of the country’s most famous painters, Rita Angus and
Colin McCahon, and Roy Forward’s and Rex Butler's claims about why McCahon
has risen to the status of New Zealand’s most prominent modern artist. I propose
that both Dissanayake’s and Dutton’s accounts of relationships that first helped
create aesthetic tastes, beginning roughly 1.7 to 1.4 million years ago, and the adaptation of theory of mind, demand that a subconscious interrelationship between
artist and viewer is an essential foundation in any artistic experience. Dutton used
the evolved interrelationship between artist and viewer to reinterpret the problem
of artistic forgery, and in a similar manner I show this evolved interrelationship
provides new elucidation of New Zealandism.
Introduction
Evolutionary aesthetics is a youthful field, and so far has only begun to come of
age with increased interest in consilience between the sciences and humanities and
increasing information about hominid evolution. Although the field is frothing
with activity, main questions in the study – why the desire to make art evolved,
either as adaptation, spandrel, separate arts as separate adaptations or different adaptations for different purposes within arts, or technology; how art was first practiced, and what uses it served to our forebears – are far from settled, and might be
for some time. As such, Davies (2012), the most comprehensive account of the
evolutionary aesthetics at present from the field’s beginnings to current research,
does not argue for one position on art’s evolutionary origins over others, but explains the positives and negatives of each case. Nevertheless, over the past two
decades, the number of voices arguing that the arts and story-telling originated in
some form as an adaptation have been growing (just a small selection includes
Dissanayake (1995) (2000) (2009) (2011), Turner (1996), Mithen (1996) (as a tool
for information storage) (2005), Miller (2000) (2001), Ralevski (2000), Tooby and
Cosmides (2001), Scalise Sugiyama (2001) (2005), Coe (2003), Voland (2003),
Carroll (2006) (2012), Zunshine (2006) (2009) (2012), Cross (2007), Dutton
(2009), Boyd (2009) (2012) and Tague (2014)), with additional support that the
3