Tuesday, December 08, 2009

The Art Instinct

We may not be quite as zealous as Dawkins here at OM, but discussion of the evolutionary origins of humans and human behaviour still bears fruit.

I just read The Art Instinct, and enjoyed it immensely. This doesn't read as esoteric and obscure art criticism, but neither does it dismiss all the modernist experiments. I won't try to summarize it here, as it has an excellent website of its own...

The Art Instinct

He has a lot to say about Duchamp's wonderful Fountain (you can see it in our header) because it was an outright winner of 'most influential piece of art of the twentieth century' back in 2004.

Many people remain offended, but that may come from their misreading that to mean 'being' the 'BEST' piece of art of the 20th Century - not the original question in this survey, of course.

Some people just enjoy upsetting themselves and feeling outraged. Come on folks, this happened 90 years ago! Keep up....

And yeah, Newsweek's survey in 2007 came up with a different answer. So much for experts.

1 comment:

The Purple Gooroo said...

That book seems really interesting, I'll add it to my "to buy" list from Amazon.

Alright - fess up - who posted on 'Have Your Say' as "Hagbard Celine"? ;-)

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