Chimpanzee Art

 

A painting by Congo the Chimp 

Since the inception of the postmodern art world in the mid-20^th century, the definition of art has been challenged and broadened.  Art is now art by artistic self-attestation.  If the artist says that the created object is art, then it is art.  But at least we have common agreement on the nature of the creative agent—Art is the creation of the human hand. Now we have art created by nonhuman artists.  And while I try not to be chauvinistic, I have to wonder—Is it art at all?

When my father retired from the police force over 20 years ago, he received as a gag gift a painting by a chimpanzee artist.  Unfortunately for his family the painting has since been lost.  Almost two years ago a collection of paintings by Congo the chimpanzee sold in London for $25,620 (Dead Chimp’s Art Sells Big).  In 1997 an art exhibition in San Francisco displayed a number of paintings by gorillas Koko and Michael (Animal Art? Is It? If So?).

Edward O. Wilson addressed the artistic talents of primates in his book, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Abridged edition.  Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 1980.).   Pages 288-289:

“Artistic impulses are by no means limited to man. In 1962, when Desmond Morris reviewed the subject in The Biology of Art, 32 individual nonhuman primates had produced drawings and paintings in captivity. Twenty-three were chimpanzees, 2 were gorillas, 3 were orangutans, and 4 were capuchin monkeys. None received special training or anything more than access to the necessary equipment. In fact, attempts to guide the efforts of the animals by inducing imitation were always unsuccessful. The drive to use the painting and drawing equipment was powerful, requiring no reinforcement from the human observers. Both young and old animals became so engrossed with the activity that they preferred it to being fed and sometimes threw temper tantrums when stopped. Two of the chimpanzees studied extensively were highly productive. “Alpha” produced over 200 pictures, while the famous “Congo,” who deserves to be called the Picasso of the great apes, was responsible for nearly 400. Although most of the efforts consisted of scribbling, the patterns were far from random. Lines and smudges were spread over a blank page outward from a centrally located figure. When a drawing was started on one side of a blank page, the chimpanzee usually shifted to the opposite side to offset it. With time the calligraphy became bolder, starting with simple lines and progressing to more complicated multiple scribbles.  Congo’s patterns progressed along approximately the same developmental path as those of very young human children, yielding fan-shaped diagrams and even complete circles.”

The primate drive to produce art is intriguing especially when paralleled to the developmental path of human children.  Does human kind’s artistic impulse find its genesis in our distant ancestors?  Wilson argues that artistic capacity offers an evolutionary advantage as it is linked to the ability to explore, learn and create.   

~TAB

 Postscript.  Biologist Edward O. Wilson is a Harvard professor, has written 20 books, won two Pulitzer prizes, and discovered hundreds of new species.  Considered to be one of the world’s greatest living scientists and one of the twentieth century’s most important thinkers, Wilson is often called, “the father of biodiversity.”  In addition to originating the field of sociobiology, he is a leading aesthetician and has done much to bring science and the humanities together.  In his book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1988. New York: Alfred A. Knopf) Wilson argues for a new science of human nature, one that would help explain the social sciences, the arts, and the humanities, as well as the physical sciences.