Animal Artistry

It's easy to appreciate our own sense of esthetics. The examples are too numerous to mention but here's one: Jack Rouse, a designer of public spaces. We're so talented that we even dress up dowdy science museums.

We are, however, in many ways more like other animals than unique to ourselves. It's been a continuing question whether or not animals can actually be artists.

Chimps have been touted as artists for some time and the current artiste, Moja, is in a similar vein. She is supposed to be a representational artist. I don't see it. Especially since one of her paintings is "named" "Name This". More is said of the humans wanting the ape to be an artist than the ape itself.

But there is something to this, I think, even though it's not the obvious human invention. Evolution works with what the animal has to derive what the animal becomes. The impulse and ability that makes humans natural artists were present in our ancestors either directly or as a latent side effect of what now are. Therefore, it should not be surprising that a chimp would be able to ability to discern something it finds pleasing in light and color. I think Moja's "representational art" is a stretch but if an animal likes the curve of a wing, for example, it's not too much of a stretch that it would also like the curve of a drawing that resembles a wing. Saying that the chimp intended the drawing to mean "wing" is too big a jump for me.

What, then, to we make of the efforts of an elephant? This is exactly the point being discussed in today's Bioephemera-- Jessica Palmer's sciene blog. Palmer referenced several articles worthy of interest. Notably, Gisela Kaplan's article in Cerebrum.

There are a number of points that Kaplan emphasizes that are interesting. Elephants, for example, are quite able to paint and paint pictures that humans find esthetically pleasing. Here are a collection of prints for sale at the Asian Elephant Art and Conservation Project. Many of them are quite pretty. But what does the elephant mean by them, if anything? Elephants don't see the same range of colors we do-- they resemble two visual pigment color blind humans. Humans with this disability discern only two primary colors, blue and yellow, and do not see intermediate colors between the two. Consider the collection of prints referenced earlier with this limitation. There are pure blue and yellow colors in the prints and blends of red and yellow. What are the elephants seeing?

Chimps and humans are much more closely related than humans and elephants but think about how art reflects culture. We have all seen souveniers exhibited to us by our traveller friends: little African woodcarvings, Mexican God's Eye yarn constructions, Japanese teapots. Put aside for the moment such items being built exclusively for export and think how they appear to the Masai? The Mayan? The Zen Monk? Do we actually see the art at all? And this is from our own species.

We know that both chimps and elephants have something we label culture. Chimps have different tools in different bands, interact in different ways depending on which group is observed. Therefore, if there was some proto-art being created it might have meaning within that band we would not be able to see without the context of experience of that band. It would be an interesting experiment to take the chimps in Africa (or in Antwerp, for that matter) and have them paint regularly and observe events that occur in the band to see if those events have any reflection in the "art" being produced. I have no idea if this experiment has been done.

Elephants, too, have culture. We know, for example, that elephants are responding to human incursion and aggression by acts of aggression of their own. (See here.)

What's interesting about Moja, for example, is she can also sign. Moja tells her keepers what she's drawn. There are significant criticisms of the whole signing movement with great apes but there is, here, some conversation about what Moja has done. As I said before, her labelling the art as, for example, a bird, may or may not be representative. At least, as we think of representation-- humans are always confusing symbols with substance.

Koko, the gorilla, also painted. The Gorilla Foundation shows some here. Apple Chase is ostensibly about a black and white dog named Apple. Sure enough, the painting is black and white. Koko's Bird looks sort of like a bird. It also looks like an F-15. Michael Shermer has a long talk at TED how humans see what they want to see. Determination that the paintings of the elephants, Moja and Koko are art is further complicated by the fact these paintings are all for sale. They are fund raising mechanisms and selected to be the most pleasing to human beings. The equation is fairly clear. Humans make Art. These animals make Art. Therefore, these animals are like Humans. Give money.

Bowerbirds also use objects to attract a possible mate. They put a great deal of time into the effort and each has an apparently clear idea of what constitutes attractiveness. Humans find this activity very compelling to the point that a performance group has named itself for them. See here. There's an artistic raven in Russia. If you can penetrate the cyrillic, the site is here. Birds are the last relic of dinosaurs and split from the line that produced mammals over 200 million years ago. Given that either bowerbirds came up with this "esthetic" sense de novo or it came from a common wellspring that mammals share. Since we don't know what it really a sense of esthetics is, it's nearly impossible to speculate.

But we do know what it does. Chimps like to paint. They get upset if interrupted before they are finished. It's not clear if the chimps just like the extra attention or if they like the painting itself-- but consider human motivations. Do artists make art because of the act of creation or because other humans appreciate it? Maybe one, maybe the other, maybe both. Certainly, bowerbirds will get upset when their creations are disturbed. Perhaps elephants do as well. I didn't find any indication of such in the literature but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

My own feeling is that if we share tool using, joy and love with other animals, why not an esthetic sense as well? It in no way diminishes us, with our edifices of art the size of mountains, to say that we share it with an elephant wielding a paintbrush.