Primate Art Making
When visiting Lascaux and admiring the beautiful rendition of horses, one cannot help wondering how primitive humans became such beautiful artists. The paintings date back about 17,000 years; yet the people of Lascaux knew what they were doing. For instance, they deliberately chose to use protruberances in the stone to add relief to the rumps of the creatures they were depicting. Where does art come from? Do we have an innate ability for it? Can other creatures make art? Could our primate cousins create art and deliberately choose to depict what they see or experience on paper? A couple years ago, I visited with "Cheetah", a chimpanzee residing in Southern California and I bought a painting he made. The strokes are very free and colorful. Some are strong, others are light - and I must say the composition is not bad for monkey art. In the 1950s and 1960s, when psychologists and primatologists teamed up to teach chimpanzees how to sign or use p...