Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes from and Why - Hardcover

Dissanayake, Ellen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0029078857 ISBN 13: 9780029078853

Publisher: Free Pr, 1992

Synopsis

Explores why, from the beginning of time, man has sought beauty, order, and meaning in art, and considers the significance of art from different perspectives

About this title

From the Back Cover:

All human societies throughout history have given a special place to the arts. Even nomadic peoples who own scarcely any material possessions embellish what they do own, decorate their bodies, and celebrate special occasions with music, song, and dance. A fundamentally human appetite or need is being expressed--and met--by artistic activity. As Ellen Dissanayake argues in this stimulating and intellectually far-ranging book, only by discovering the natural origins of this human need of art will we truly know what art is, what it means, and what its future might be. Describing visual display, poetic language, song and dance, music, and dramatic performance as ways by which humans have universally, necessarily, and immemorially shaped and enhanced the things they care about, Dissanayake shows that aesthetic perception is not something that we learn or acquire for its own sake but is inherent in the reconciliation of culture and nature that has marked our evolution as humans. What "artists" do is an intensification and exaggeration of what "ordinary people" do, naturally and with enjoyment--as is evident in premodern societies, where artmaking is universally practiced. Dissanayake insists that aesthetic experience cannot be properly understood apart from the psychobiology of sense, feeling, and cognition--the ways we spontaneously and commonly think and behave. If homo aestheticus seems unrecognizable in today's modern and postmodern societies, it is so because "art" has been falsely set apart from life, while the reductive imperatives of an acquisitive and efficiency-oriented culture require us to ignore or devalue the aesthetic part of our nature. Dissanayake's original and provocativeapproach will stimulate new thinking in the current controversies regarding multi-cultural curricula and the role of art in education. Her ideas also have relevance to contemporary art and social theory and will be of interest to all who care strongly about the arts and their place in human, and humane, life.

From Library Journal:

This book is an expanded discussion of the views Dissanayake put forth in her earlier work What Is Art For? ( LJ 10/1/88). Her central thesis is that the arts are universally present in human societies because play and ritual were essential to the adaptation and survival of our species. Utilizing the findings of anthropology and ethology--the study of animal (including human) behavior--she concludes that the arts have allowed us to differentiate the special from the mundane, thus enabling us to cope with unusual or inexplicable occurrences and to gain a communal focus that enhances our ability to flourish and survive. The author offers her theory as an alternative to the enlightenment/modernist and postmodernist views of art that grow out of overdependence on the written word. While Dissanayake may not have accounted entirely for art's unique role in contemporary Western society, viz. ritual and play, her discussion of the idea of "making special" offers many insights into human cultures. For specialized collections in the arts and anthropology.
- David B. Hegeman, King's Coll. Lib., Briarcliff Manor, N.Y.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Free Pr
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0029078857
• ISBN 13: 9780029078853
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 297