We have surveyed, albeit cursorily, an enormous range of material, looking at manifestations that at least resemble what we are accustomed to think of as art or aesthetic proclivity in primitive societies, in prehistoric remains, in chimpanzees, and as they develop in children.
In all this we have been guided by an idea that has been well established in Western rational thought at least since Aristotle — even though often criticized and now considered to be outmoded. That is, we have been trying to find out what something (art) is by examining all the instances of it and hoping thereby to find a common denominator. It is no secret that it is notoriously difficult if not impossible to define most things that way. Not all chairs have four legs, not all crows are black; and quite obviously, as our survey has indubitably shown, not all art displays one common feature.
by Ellen Dissanayake
Every human society displays some form of behavior that can be called “art,” and in most societies other than our own the arts play an integral part in social life. Those who wish to understand art in its broadest sense, as a universal human endowment, need to go beyond modern Western elitist notions that disregard other cultures and ignore the human species’ four-million-year evolutionary history.
Common sense deriving from everyday experience also contributes to what is said or thought about these matters. The word “art” is like the words “love” or “happiness” in that everyone knows what they mean or recognizes what they refer to, but, when pressed, finds them difficult to define with consistency or wide application.
At first glance, the fact that the arts and related aesthetic attitudes vary so widely from one society to another would seem to suggest that they are wholly learned or ‘cultural’ in origin rather than, as I will show, also biological or ‘natural.’ One can make an analogy with language: learning to speak is a universal, innate predisposition for all children even though individual children learn the particular language of the people among whom they are nurtured. Similarly, art can be regarded as a natural, general proclivity that manifests itself in culturally learned specifics such as dances, songs, performances, visual display, and poetic speech.
Ellen Dissanayake
http://www.ellendissanayake.com/