Ernst Fischer (1899-1971), in his well-known book The Necessity of Art, categorically states that “art is necessary.” Perhaps the word necessary is too ostentatious, but, in reality, Can we conceive of any culture in some remote place on earth or at any historical moment that has not made art?
The answer, obviously, is no. All cultures have produced artistic works, whether for religious, aesthetic reasons, or simply as community cohesion. Art is not only an element linked to social life, but also to the individual, since, more recently, the artistic expression of the subject has been valued as something unique and inherent to the human capacity to create it. Why was art created? What need impelled human beings to shape the first artistic object? We’ll tell you then.
Why was art created? A long journey to the origins
The journey that takes us to the beginnings of art is much longer than, in principle, we can think. Because, in light of recent research, and contrary to what has been believed for decades, Homo Sapiens was not the first living being to make art. Decorations with geometric motifs that have been dated to more than 65,000 years old have recently been discovered in the Iberian Peninsula, long before the arrival of Homo Sapiens in Europe. This dating provides evidence that is difficult to deny: Homo Neanderthalensis, our closest relative, was already making art before us.
Why did Neanderthal men and women start painting their caves? We are still far from knowing, since, in many things, Neanderthal culture is a real mystery. What is clear is that Homo Sapiens, that is, our species, left very ancient artistic manifestations, linked to their need to express their vision of the world, which is probably not very far from the intention of the Neanderthals.
The human being is the only living being that has aesthetic capacity, which necessarily links artistic creation with symbolic thought Or, at least, that is what has always been considered. Manuel Martín Loeches (1974), head of Psychobiology at the Complutense University of Madrid, has another theory. In his conference The origin of art from a neuroscientific perspective, the professor assured that artistic creation is directly related to a chemical factor: when faced with color and perspective, the brain generates a sensation of joy that makes it secrete endogenous opiates that favor feeling of pleasure and well-being.
In other words, Martín Loeches affirms that the origin of creation is not linked to symbolic elements such as language or religion, but to something as simple as brain chemistry. This would make more explicit the need for Neanderthals to capture colored pigments on the walls of their caves. The statement represents a revolution in the sense that, until now, the origin of artistic creation was supported in a symbolic mind as a sine qua non condition for the artistic phenomenon to occur.
This could explain, for example, why Neanderthals were able to express themselves artistically through chromatic pigmentation, even though they supposedly could not think symbolically. But then, if according to Professor Martín Loeches a symbolic mind is not necessary to express oneself artistically, Why is the human being the only creature that has been capable of making art? Or, rather: Is it?
More than chemistry
Despite the evidence about our brain’s reaction to chromatic stimuli (which would also be, by the way, in a spring landscape) there must be other factors that turn art into an exclusively human element. These elements are aspects such as the need for communication in the group and the expression of concepts of a religious or symbolic nature According to Vicenç Furió Galí, author of Art History: Theoretical and Methodological Aspects, aesthetics is the function that is furthest from the practical, so, evidently, at the origin of artistic creation there must be something more besides a primary need.
This is perhaps what differentiates human creations from those of great primates. In the 1960s, zoologist Desmond Morris revolutionized the art scene by presenting chimpanzee “artwork,” raising the question: Are humans really the only ones who can make art? Morris taught several chimpanzees to paint. At first, the animals responded satisfactorily and seemed focused on their work with the paints. However, Morris soon realized that if they were no longer “rewarded” with food, the chimpanzees lost interest in the activity, which differentiates these primates from a human child, who can spend the entire afternoon drawing around. the simple act of drawing.
The second step of Morris’s experiment did represent an unexpected twist, since Congo, the chimpanzee whom he taught to paint at the age of two, executed his work without any type of compensation. It’s more, Congo’s brushstrokes were not made at random, but rather seemed subject to some type of chromatic or aesthetic logic The case was so notorious that Picasso and Miró themselves had paintings from Congo among their collection.
The question is, then, inevitable: was the origin of art related exclusively to aesthetic pleasure, and later became a vehicle for the expression of ideas? Morris’s experiment seems to reinforce this hypothesis, since Congo did not perform “art” as a simple “compensatory” activity, but rather as pure creative pleasure.
After a first aesthetic experience that, as Martín Loeches maintains, could be linked to brain chemistry, human beings soon realized that, through art, they could express their concerns about life and what surrounded them, in a kind of spiritual exorcism. He realized that he could immortalize the “soul” of his deceased in votive figurines, or capture his face in wax masks or busts; that is, capturing the infinite in something tangible, which went far beyond pure aesthetic pleasure. Art became, in this way, a spiritual necessity
