The Mating Mind

Art as a Form of Sexual Selection

from David Byrne's Journal

Appropriately enough, just as I head to Miami for the Miami/Basel art fair extravaganza I finish the chapter in Geoffrey Miller’s The Mating Mind on art. It’s sure to be controversial with this art fair crowd, as he posits that art evolved as a kind of display useful for sexual selection. One immediately thinks of the peacock’s tail when one hears display, but the peacock doesn’t make his tail — he’s born with it. Art is a display outside the body, made by the skill of the hand and mind. Miller posits that the ability of our minds to charm, seduce, captivate and enrapture — via artistic work, conversation, language, dance, sport — gives proof to potential mates that not only are we physically appealing, which can be assessed relatively quickly, but that we might have deeper levels of genetic fitness beneath the visible surface. more