Art is a basic human trait, right? Well, yes, so I said last week for language and art but this week I feel entitled for a second opinion. Perhaps we prize human language so high only because we aren’t capable of understanding any animal language; our genetic communication blueprint could be one of our evolutionary discrepancies. As for the art ....
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an excerpt from The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond (Harper Perennial, 1992) Siri’s drawings brought her acclaim as soon as other knowledgeable artists saw them. "They had a kind of flair and decisiveness and originality" - that was the first reaction of the famous abstract expressionist painter Willem de Kooning. Jerome Witkin, an authority on abstract expressionism who teaches art at Syracuse University, was even more effusive: "These drawings are very lyrical, very, very beautiful. They are so positive and affirmative and tense, the energy is so compact and controlled, it’s just incredible.... This drawing indicates a grasp of the essential mark that makes the emotion." Witkin applauded Siri’s balance of positive and negative space, and her placement and orientation of images. Having seen the drawings but knowing nothing about who made them, he guessed correctly that the artist was female and interested in Asian calligraphy. But Witkin didn’t guess that Siri was eight feet tall and weighed four tons. Siri was an Asian elephant who draw by holding a pencil in her trunk. De Kooning’s responce to being told Siri’s identity was "That’s a dammed talented elephant." After learning the identity of the artist, Witkin said: "Our egos as human beings have prevented us for too long for watching for the possibility of artistic expression in other beings." Actually, Siri was not extraordinary by elephant standards. Wild elephants often use their trunks to make drawing motions in the dust, while captive elephants often spontaneously scratch marks on the ground with a stick or stone. |
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