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Chimp Art
I saw a news story on this auction yesterday morning. I liked the part where they showed random people two pieces of art, one done by a chimp, one a "masterpiece" hanging in a museum, and asked to choose which was the chimp. They almost always chose the human.
But what interested me most about the story on the chimps wasn't that people bought their art. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, you buy what you like. If it was painted by a chimp or a mosquito, a computer or a pretentious young art student, it makes no difference to me.
What interested me the most is that the monkeys actually cared. They weren't just knocking paint onto a canvas and rolling around in it, or casually, unconcernedly making tracks as they wandered across the paper. They were specifically sitting down and using the tools to create. Not that different than a child with a paintbrush, the joy of using as many colors as possible, the experimentation with different types of strokes, the unfinished look of the canvases.
But they key, I think, is that it was all intentional. They took the brush, dipped it in the paint and made marks in places they thought marks needed to be, or places they thought might be interesting with paint on them.
To me, this was a huge revelation. Here is an animal, a primate, engaged in an activity that has nothing to do with surviving, eating or fucking. The chimp was painting simply because she liked the idea of applying paint to a canvas. They even showed, at one point, another chimp walked across the canvas, and the painter flipped the board over and started again.
If I had a grant, I'd be all over this. I've often wondered where our urge for art and music comes from, but if chimps have some sort of drive for abstract expression or abstract appreciation, it's one more link between us. I want to know what it's all about.
My favorite line from the article:
The collection of three tempera paintings - all abstract... Yeah, oddly enough landscapes and portraits weren't his specialty.
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