{"id":577,"date":"2026-02-10T13:07:01","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T12:07:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/filmschoolteacher.info\/fredsnotes\/?p=577"},"modified":"2026-02-10T13:07:02","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T12:07:02","slug":"some-notes-on-the-role-of-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/filmschoolteacher.info\/fredsnotes\/2026\/02\/10\/some-notes-on-the-role-of-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Some notes on the role of art"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

All the archaeological evidences […] conclude that the first necessity as a human species is aesthetics […]. Outside the needs of the reptilian brain, the human needs something that is not apparently useful, but that fills the soul, art.[1]<\/sup><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Increasingly, archaeological evidence shows that humans \u2014 and our hominid ancestors \u2014 have been engaging it what could be interpreted as aesthetic or artistic activity for as long as we have existed. There is some evidence that as long as 3 million years ago, a hominid ancestor of ours picked up a pebble reminiscent of a face from a river and brought it to their settlement.[2]<\/sup> We will never know why, or what went through the mind of that individual, but it indicates a recognition of the face in the pebble and a subsequent will to carry this item, which has no purpose for survival, with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More recently, there is evidence our species, homo sapiens<\/em>, created beaded necklaces as early as 142 000 years ago<\/a>. And, thousands of years before our species began to inhabit Europe (often considered to have happened around 45 000 years ago), Neanderthals were creating art<\/a> on the walls of caves. Around the same time period (50-60 000 years ago), they were also creating musical instruments<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other studies show that our artistic activities predate any items unearthed, as<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The brain activation detected by positron emission tomography during tool-making included both visuomotor and language circuits, suggesting that tool-making and language share a basis in the human capacity for complex goal-directed manual activity. As this includes artistic creativity, evidence of the increasing sophistication of tool technology, as well as evidence from crania of increasing brain size, suggests that our ancestors had the ability to create art or proto-art much earlier in evolution than is suggested by current knowledge of art-related artefacts.[3]<\/sup><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In short, without going into the full scale of the research on this, art-making is an ingrained part of being human\u2014and was, in fact, an ingrained part of being a hominid long before Homo Sapiens<\/em> evolved. From my perspective, it is plausible to believe that the ability to create art and to enjoy art from both a personal and a social perspective is what makes us human. Further to that, art and the development of art drives development and change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One perspective on this comes from Lev Vygotsky, who wrote in 1925,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Art is the social within us, and even if its action is performed by a single individual, it does not mean that its essence is individual. It is quite naive and inappropriate to take the social to be collective, as with a large crowd of persons. The social also exists where there is only one person with his individual experiences and tribulations. This is why the action of art, when it performs catharsis and pushes into this purifying flame the most intimate and important experiences, emotions, and feelings of the soul, is a social action. But this experience does not happen as described in the theory of contamination (where a feeling born in one person infects and contaminates everybody and becomes<\/em> social), but exactly the other way around. The melting of feelings outside us is performed by the strength of social feeling, which is objectivized, materialized, and projected outside of us, then fixed in external objects of art which have become the tools of society. A fundamental characteristic of man, one that distinguishes him from animals, is that he endures and separates from his body both the apparatus of technology and that of scientific knowledge, which then become the tools of society. Art is the social technique of emotion, a tool of society which brings the most intimate and personal aspects of our being into the circle of social life. It would be more correct to say that emotion becomes personal when every one of us experiences a work of art; it becomes personal without ceasing to be social.[4]<\/sup><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Alva No\u00eb picked up on this a hundred years later when he wrote,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Art lets us catch ourselves in the act of bringing the world into focus for consciousness, and this is surely one of the sources of art’s value.[5]<\/sup><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

And on the next page,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Whatever other sources of value art has, one of its sources is that it affords us an opportunity for aesthetic work, and aesthetic work changes us. These changes in us in turn make it necessary for artists to make new kinds of work. And so on. Art changes us, which drives art to change, which in turn changes us more, and on and on. We have a history, it turns out, in part because of the fact that there is an art history.[6]<\/sup><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

From this, I get the following thoughts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. The capacity to recognize aesthetic qualities and create items that seemingly exist for primarily aesthetic reasons (as opposed to being necessary for survival) can be traced to the hominid ancestors of Homo sapiens.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. The ability to create art and the sophistication of art created has evolved in parallel with the evolution of human society.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. There are indications that art is a prerequisite for innovation and development; both creating art and being exposed to art allows us to see the world in new ways and thus create the new and unexpected, also in non-artistic endeavours.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Art is necessary for our emotional and personal integration into society, as it gives us access to the emotions and thoughts of others in ways that no other means can.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Footnotes<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
    \n\n\n\n
      \n
    1. From the Conclusion in Araceli Gim\u00e9nez Lorente (2020). “The Origin of Art: An Approximation through Archaeological Evidences.” Sociology and Anthropology<\/em>, 8(3), 82 – 91. DOI: 10.13189\/sa.2020.080304.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    2. Ibid.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    3. Morriss-Kay, G.M. (2010), The evolution of human artistic creativity. Journal of Anatomy, 216: 158-176. doi.org\/10.1111\/j.1469-7580.2009.01160.x.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    4. Vygotsky, Lev Semenovich. The Psychology of Art<\/em>. The MIT Press, 1974.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    5. No\u00eb, Alva. The Entanglement<\/em>. Princeton University Press, 2025. p. 170. https:\/\/press.princeton.edu\/books\/paperback\/9780691249575\/the-entanglement<\/a>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    6. Ibid. p. 171.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      All the archaeological evidences […] conclude that the first necessity as a human species is aesthetics […]. Outside the needs of the reptilian brain, the human needs something that is not apparently useful, but that fills the soul, art.[1] Increasingly, archaeological evidence shows that humans \u2014 and our hominid ancestors \u2014 have been engaging it … Continue reading “Some notes on the role of art”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[127,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fine-arts","category-fine-arts-education"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmschoolteacher.info\/fredsnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmschoolteacher.info\/fredsnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmschoolteacher.info\/fredsnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmschoolteacher.info\/fredsnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmschoolteacher.info\/fredsnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/filmschoolteacher.info\/fredsnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":578,"href":"https:\/\/filmschoolteacher.info\/fredsnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577\/revisions\/578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmschoolteacher.info\/fredsnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmschoolteacher.info\/fredsnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmschoolteacher.info\/fredsnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}