I've been reading Denis Dutton's book: "The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution" and have found that it's not as convincing as I'd hoped it would be. Having the good fortune to photograph in an area that was frequented in the mid to late 1800's by artists of the Hudson Valley School, I was hoping that Dutton would help explain why some of my images are almost an exact match to scenes painted by these artists 150 years ago.
I've posted a painting done by Sanford Gifford in 1864 and some photographs of mine taken from the same spot he must have sketched from.
What is it that makes a landscape compelling across generations? One would think that cultural influence alone would not be a sufficient explanation, since the culture of post-Civil War America – when these paintings were done – seems very different from today's culture.
I began to think that perhaps we are "wired" in a particular way so that certain landscapes could strike a chord in a very diverse population of viewers. I was familiar in passing with Jung's notion of "archetypes" –components of a collective unconscious that inform human behavior – and wondered if that might explain this phenomenon.
When I heard Dutton as a guest on the Colbert Report describing his thesis, namely that evolutionary forces can explain the drive that humans have to express themselves artistically and likewise respond to art, I purchased the book.
So far, the argument he makes is interesting but unconvincing. I'll see if the latter part of the book makes a more compelling case.