ASEBL Journal – Volume 11 Issue 2, Spring 2015
only other artistic practice, or proto-art practice, seen in nature to a level of an art
culture is employed as an adaptation by bowerbirds, creating bowers with art displays for mating (for more, see Rothenberg 2011). These arguments all differ,
sometimes competing, though many do not exclude the possibility others are correct to varying degrees. Adaptationist theory is most exciting when adaptation allows for new ideas and powerful insight into artistic problems: for example,
Boyd’s argument that literature evolved as a more complicated form of imaginative play and Dutton’s argument that artification began from sexual selection
around 1.4 million years ago with Homo ergaster and Homo erectus both provide
interesting interpretations respectively about how literature can help people learn
about the world, particularly how to act in social settings, why cross-cultural artistic appreciation exists and the problem of why artistic forgery is nearly always abhorred. Theories about the origins of artification are at their strongest when they
have strong empirical support and can also provide new theoretical insight.
Aside from adaptationist arguments that attempt to illuminate whole subjects, either art generally or a particular art or aspect of art, adaptationist arguments can
provide new ways to explore and support art theory. Here, I advance another argument in support of the adaptationist theory by exploring how Dissanayake’s and
Dutton’s theories on adaptationary origins of the arts can provide provocative insight into a particular subject within art theory, Hamish Keith’s concept of “New
Zealandism” in painting (Keith and Brown 1969) (Keith 2007). Although the area
is far from settled, and scho