I would have assumed the primary reason for animal artwork is to impress a potential mate with a view to getting a quick leg trembler.

That artwork is created for exactly the same reason as humans create artwork

How do you know?

I think it’s fairly obvious that the artwork was created because it is considered to be aesthetically pleasing – to include the rest of my edited sentence.

Otherwise it would fail in its intended purpose, ie, to be aesthetically pleasing.

In the examples above there is a huge amount of individual creativity.

Of course you’re free to disagree. Perhaps like Fredrick Engels you think it isn’t even art 🙂

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I would have assumed the primary reason for animal artwork is to impress a potential mate with a view to getting a quick leg trembler.

And I think you also need to assume that the female bower bird appreciates art, and is in fact quite fussy. Incredibly fussy by all accounts.

Talent is a fanny magnet, eh?

EDIT : Anyway, which is your favourite? I think mine is the subtle contrast between the grey pebbles and the white shells and bones – the contrast in colours and the contrast in organic and inorganic. Although the blue straws and bottle tops score highly for creativity and going beyond the normal parameters imo.

The blue one I think, closely followed by the bones.

The last one is a bit of a mishmash, it looks like he couldn’t decide what the theme should be.

Do you reckon he got a shag? Maybe from a “cuddly” female bower bird, eh?

I would hope so after that much effort.

I fully accept the theory of primitive communism when humans lived in classless societies in which each contributed according to their ability and received according to their needs.

Of course after hundreds of thousands of years of primitive communism it all went pear-shaped with the arrival of surplus, accumulative wealth/money, and class systems/class antagonism.

Ernie on top form throughout this thread
but that was my favourite

Blimey, I’ve just done a reduced Tour de Rutland on the road bike and this is still going on. It’s utter madness to impute ideas like an aesthetic (an essentially contested concept) on animals. Not even humans can agree on aesthetics (Duchamp’s latrine, Carl Andre’s pile of bricks, Banksy etc). I see animals out of my window all the time, none remind me of Hockney, not much anyway.

Thank you JY but it’s just basic GCSE marxism, as THM would say.

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Not even humans can agree on aesthetics

So why the hell mention that Engels reckoned that animals don’t do art then? Or are you disputing that one of the primary purposes of art, especially primitive art, is to be aesthetically pleasing?

Carl Andre’s pile of bricks

Never seen it (unless he was a hod-carrier on one of the sites I’ve worked) was it as good as “grey pebbles with white shells and bones” ?

I’ve just done a reduced Tour de Rutland on the road bike

Thank you for reminding me that due to a serious bout of manflue I’ve missed 2 days of riding in dry sunny weather, including an arranged MTB ride yesterday which I had literally been looking forward to for several weeks 🙁

Hi folks.

So, little Johnny may pull through an operation, and give his parents the inspiration to ‘thank God’, or he may not pull through an operation, and so give his parents the inspiration to curse God. Either way, God’s function in the situation is to have given the mind to humankind for medicine in the first place, and to redeem the situation for the better whether Johnny lives or dies.

SaxonRider, this is interesting. However, why does Johnny need an operation in the first place? Why does he have a tumor? Why did God create the conditions that allowed meningitis to evolve? These are unanswered questions for me.

Either they exist, and therefore everything that happens can be attributed to them or they don’t

Lol – talk about oversimplistic 🙂 As if you could every perceive or even comprehend everything that exists or doesn’t! You can only see three dimensions ffs.

Not a fairy story. A real explanation of the world around us.

Is it hell! It’s a description, not an explanation! If I ask you the question ‘why does the Standard Model exist?’ you’ve got nothing. I’m not saying it was God, but a good scientist cannot possibly be so cock-sure about something they know nothing about.

Religious doctrines were developed and maintained by the ruling few to control the masses.

Hmm, in some cases undoubtedly, but not all. A bit of history should set you straight there.

I will make one contribution to this thread:
Yawn.

The figures looked more or less human. And they were engaged in religion. You could tell by the knives (it’s not murder if you do it for a god).

Terry Pratchett nails it.

It’s utter madness to impute ideas like an aesthetic (an essentially contested concept) on animals.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3419115/

I think this thread proves unequivocally that if a god exists, it has a sense of humour that is something of a mix between monty python, chris morris and bernard manning 🙂