“Art” by Animals, Part 2: When the Artist Is an Ape—Popular and Scientific Discourse and Paintings by Primates
“Art” by Animals, Part 2: When the Artist Is an Ape—Popular and Scientific Discourse and Paintings by Primates
In this chapter on “art” produced by nonhuman primates and its transnational market, Desmond explores the issues of representational art and how that categorization is used to raise the bar in humans’ evaluation of nonhuman animals’ intellectual capacities and our resultant moral obligations to them. Desmond retains an emphasis on understanding the creation, reception, and circulation of animal art products within the context of a specifically European-derived notion of art making and its contemporary linkage of notions of individual creativity, subjectivity, and visual skill. She cites the post-World War II rise of abstract art and abstract expressionism as a key prerequisite for the expansion of the animal art market overall. Special attention is paid to works produced by primates involved in human language studies, such as Kanzi and Koko.
Keywords: animals, animal art, artwork, primates, art value, apes, language, Kanzi, Koko
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