1. Chapter 1.1- The
Impulse for Art
to make, to experience, to understand

2. Last class
• appreciation=recognizing good qualities of something or
someone, having full understanding
• art appreciation=recognizing good qualities of art and
having understanding of art
• knowledge leads to increases appreciation
• knowing context (circumstances of work)
• appreciation does not mean “like”
• rationale of course (discernment of good= being good)

3. Why Art?
• Making
• Experiencing
• Understanding

4. Utilitarian
• made to be useful rather than attractive
• attitude or method
• synonyms = practical, functional, pragmatic,
• utility

6. Utilitarian-plus

7. Ellen Dissanayake

8. Ellen Dissanayake
• created field of study that looks at
biological and evolutionary reasons why
humans make art
• only holds undergraduate degree (no PhD)
• began studies independently as housewife
of biologist husband
• “first to take a serious Darwinian look at
art and human ornamentation as genuine
adaptation”

9. Dissanayake’s
observations
• art is universal
• takes up vast resources and time
• gives pleasure similar to sex, food , intimacy
• young children engage in art sponaneously

10. Dissanayake’s
conclusions
• natural selection long ago rendered art a
standard component of human behavior
• evolutionary advantage for survival (Darwin
had hunch with the Bowerbirds)
• art is tied to ritual
• “making-special”
• how we use art today is very different than
in the past

11. Dissanayake’s evidence
Paleolithic/
Neolithic Record

12. The Acheulean hand axe
•made by Home Erectus (500,000-200,000 b.c)
•many extremely symmetrically fashioned
•any intrinsic element like a fossil is featured
•utilitarian-plus

13. Jamon period
storage jar, Japan
2500-1500 BC

14. Socio-biological
Play
• inherent in children
• inventiveness, make-believe, imitation,
movement
• play is for its own sake
• ties in with desire for novelty and
entertainment
• learning social behavior
• art derivative from play

15. Socio-biological
Ritual
• involves all the arts (multi-media)
• elevated experience, separate from ordinary
• unified experience, everyone participates
• important for social cohesion of tribe
• hunting, healing, life markers, religious

16. vsArt in Past Art Today
part of everyday life separate from everyday life
everyone participates specialists called “artists”
socially cohesive,
unchanging
ever-changing,
need for the unique
communicates a
community’s ideals
communicates an
individual’s ideals
“Art”“making special”

17. making special
• Dissanayake coined to describe human tendency
to differentiate between the ordinary and more
than ordinary
• root of art
• again, biologically programmed via evolution
• involved in ritual, toolmaking, symbol making
• promotes social cohesion which increases chance
for survival

18. making special game
• Class enacted the making, experiencing and
the understanding
• Introduced idea of utilitarian-plus vs art

19. The aesthetic
experience
• Ferris Bueller video
• a feeling or set of feelings one gets encountering
stimuli
• varying degrees of delight, exhilaration, increased
awareness, feeling fully present
• to savor, attention is fixed, captivated
• perceiving something that you have no desire to
change, just extend
• like “making special”, heightened state

20. Aesthetics
• field of philosophy concerned with the
nature of beauty and art
• finding agreeable definitions, broad appeal
• the “aesthetic experience” is more
personal, can apply to the generally agreed
beautiful (faces, nature, art) but could also
apply to the irregular, grotesque, scary,
unusual, perplexing, the everyday, fleeting

21. Johannes Vermeer
The Milkmaid
c. 1658

22. Johannes Vermeer
The Girl with the
Pearl Earring
c. 1665

23. Andy
Goldsworthy

24. Andy
Goldsworthy

25. Tara Donovan

26. "Good art is not what it looks like, but
what it does to us."- Roy Adzak