3.3 The Origin of Art or Homo Aestheticus? Part 2: A Japanese Mirror, The Aesthetic Mode of Consciousness, Homo faber, and Ochre

"Amédée Ozenfant wrote of the art in the Les Eyzies caves, 'Ah, those hands! Those silhouettes of hands, spread out and stencilled on an ochre ground! Go and see them. I promise you the most intense emotion you have ever experienced.' He credited the Paleolithic artists with inspiring modern art, and to a certain degree, they did. Jackson Pollock honoured them by leaving handprints along the top edge of at least two of his paintings. Pablo Picasso reportedly visited the famous Altamira cave before fleeing Spain in 1934, and emerged saying: 'Beyond Altamira, all is decadence.'"

-Barbara Ehrenreich

"Should we not say that we make a house by the art of building, and by the art of painting we make another house, a sort of man-made dream produced for those who are awake?"

-Plato, Sophist

"The aim of an artist is not to solve a problem irrefutably, but to make people love life in all its countless, inexhaustible manifestations."

-Leo Tolstoy, Virgo

"I am a great believer in the creativity of the selective, perceptive act. I once read an article in the International Herald Tribune about a man named Jean-Claude Andrault who had an exhibit, in a small Paris museum, of various pieces of wood he had found over a many-decade span, which resembled all sorts of objects: “landscapes, writhing polyps, an erupting volcano, abstract visions and so on", to quote Michael Gibson, the author of the article. In fact, let me continue quoting Gibson’s opinions: 'He [Andrault] wanted to know if I thought these objects were art I said I did not — because they do not voice any human intention. These objects are a case of nature imitating art...But a work of art in its proper dimension is more than order, pattern, suggestion It conveys an intention and thus reveals itself to be a product and an expression of culture taken as the web of all human purposefulness.' Gibson clearly likes Andrault’s stuff — he just doesn’t consider it art. I find this absurd. In a sense I agree that art has to 'voice a human intention', but the act of selection by Andrault is a deep human intention, just as deep as a photographer’s selection of a scene or an event to capture. In fact, Gibson overlooks one further level of human intention: the very idea of collecting pieces of wood and exhibiting them is an excellent example of original human intention. Indeed, it's the invention of a whole new art form!”

-Douglas Hofstadter, Le Ton beau de Marot

“The very first artistic act executed by man was one of adornment and, above all, the adornment of his own body. In adornment, that primordial art, we find the seeds of all subsequent art. And that first artistic act simply consisted of the union of two works of nature that nature itself had not united. Man placed a feather upon his head, or strung together tiger's teeth to hang about his neck, or clasped a bracelet of colorful stones around his wrist; and behold, the first babblings of that complex and divine discourse on art.” 

-José Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on the Frame (1990)

Sources/place for discussion: https://old.reddit.com/r/DilettanteryPodcast/comments/y3ixbp/33_the_origin_of_art_or_homo_aestheticus_part_2_a/?