The early human cave paintings found in places such as Altamira in Spain showed a desire to create art has predated civilisation (Credit: VCG Wilson/Corbis via Getty Images)
Birds Do It, Bees Do It: Taking Animals’ Art Skills Seriously
Last year London’s Grant Museum of Zoology staged what organizers thought was the first inter-species show of paintings by animals.
Baka, a Sumatran Orangutan who resides at Colorado’s Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, showed impastoed, calligraphic slashes in the manner of Kline. Samantha, a Western lowland Gorilla who lived at the Erie Zoo in Pennsylvania, had an allover composition of candy-colored strokes evoking late de Kooning. Boon Mee, an elephant in Thailand’s Samutprakarn Zoo, took a more figurative path, with an astounding rendering of a flower pot.
That such primate and elephant art hews so closely to Western art conventions reveals more about our expectations than their talents. Boon Mee, for example, was guided by a keeper who manipulated her ear like a joystick in order to steer her trunk. The result may still be impressive, but it hardly reflects the creature’s natural tendencies—or the latest science.
The perception of animals as art-makers has come a long way since the late ’50s, when Desmond Morris put Congo the painting chimp on British TV, and in a famous show at London’s ICA.
Today animal artists are not viewed so much as novelties but as sophisticated creators with skills and senses that can enhance projects in ways humans never can. Anthropomorphism is out, and biological determinism is in.
It has become common for zoos and even aquariums to offer art supplies to a wide variety of species, part of efforts–known as Enrichment–to keep animals physically and mentally stimulated.
Among residents of the National Zoo in Washington who have made art in such programs are a banded armadillo, a naked mole rat, hissing cockroaches, a leopard gecko, lions, grizzlies, the Elegant Crested Tinamou, a toucan, and Tian Tian, the giant panda.
The projects are designed to tap into natural behaviors. Sloth bears, who feed by blowing away dirt on the forest floor and sucking up termites, were given a straw-like apparatus to blow paint onto the canvas. Frogs received an organic paint-like substance created from the powdered algae mix they use as food.
Though treats are sometimes used to encourage animal-art makers, zoo staff describe their movements as voluntary and instinctive. “Animals can choose whether or not they want to participate,” Courtney Janney, a keeper on the Asia Trail, explained. “They all do, willingly, so they’re enjoying it on some level.” The zoo was selling mammal and bird art to raise funds but has suspended the painting program for now due to budget cuts.
Complementing these zoological initiatives are innovative projects in the mainstream art world. Enlisting animals for art is hardly new—Dieter Roth essentially invited insects to dine on the chocolate works up at MoMA right now; Carolina Miranda reported in our pages about artists like María Fernanda Cardoso, who has worked with jumping fleas and self-camouflaging katydids. But these days, more and more contemporary artists are bringing more science—and more animals—into the equation.
“Applied Design,” MoMA’s current show of cutting-edge design acquisitions (better known for its video game contents), includes three such projects. For his Honeycomb Vase “Made by Bees,” Tomáš Gabzdil Libertíny placed a vase-shaped beehive scaffold in a bee colony. In a process that took 40,000 bees one week—the artist calls it “slow prototyping”—the creatures built a hive around the form.
Susana Soares channels bees’ odor sensitivity in diagnostic tools that can help detect disease and monitor fertility cycles. Fertility Object from the BEE’S project, a prototype, features different glass chambers where bees congregate depending on smells they perceive in human breath that reflect ovulation status.
Another prototype in “Applied Design,” Geoffrey Mann’s Attracted to Light, uses cinematic technology to capture the paths of moths through air. With 3-D printing, the creatures’ trajectory is translated into the form of a lamp.
Tomás Saraceno has long been fascinated by spiderwebs, which he has used as a conceptual departure point and raw material. In his current show at Esther Schipper in Berlin, titled “Social .. Quasi social .. Solitary .. Spiders … On hybrid cosmic webs,” he enlisted various species to create the artworks, passing the form from one spider to the next in a variant of the Surrealist “Exquisite Corpse” game. With their multiple, unrelated authors, the resulting structures are hybrid webs that would never be found in nature.
Björn Braun used a similar strategy for the nests shown at Meyer Riegger’s stand at New York’s recent Independent Fair. He foraged nests from the wild and presented them to finches, along with manmade materials like ribbons, leather, and multicolored thread. The new team of birds incorporated the unnatural objects into the natural ones with a rococo flourish.
Catherine Chalmers has harnessed the instincts of insects in her art throughout her career (including the cockroaches we covered in 2001). Most recently she’s been working with leafcutter ants in the Costa Rica rain forest, on projects that will ultimately include photography, video, drawing, and sculpture. For one series, “Antworks,” she brought plants native to a more sandy-soiled area and documented ways ants cut and carried them. In another, “Offerings,” she placed flower petals on their trail, along with a camera. In her videos, the scenarios become narratives—including one of an art show in which the ants parade their creations.
David Nyzio’s 2001 exhibition at Postmasters showcased the sculptural abilities of several animals. Sheep helped out with the salt licks.
Beavers applied their carving talents to sculptural columns with a Brancusian twist.
Looking at the spectacular dams, nests, webs, and other elaborate constructions found in the natural world, it remains difficult to leave our art-world sensibilities behind. Indeed some scientists are convinced that animals have the emotional complexity to perceive beauty, make esthetic choices, and produce forms (or song) for art’s sake. At a time when researchers are just beginning to decode the meaning of animal sounds, there is clearly more to learn about their art practice–or, at least, about the reasons we are so invested in the idea that they have one.
The sculptures take up to nine days to construct
There are many animals that make elaborate structures, but almost all of this output serves a practical rather than aesthetic purpose. Spiders weave intricate webs that look beautiful to the human eye, but to the spiders they serve as fly traps. Architects looking for a bold innovative design need look no further than the perfect symmetry of the honeycomb, but bees use it to house their larvae and stores of honey and pollen.
Nevertheless, there are some creatures that create objects of beauty without any seemingly practical purpose.
In 1995, divers off the coast of Japan noticed a series of odd geometric patterns etched on the seafloor. These “underwater crop circles,” as they became known, stretched up to 2m (6.6ft) long, and remained a mystery for almost two decades.
In 2011, scientists found the creature responsible – a new species of Torquigener pufferfish. The male pufferfish painstakingly creates the circles by flapping his fins as he swims along the sea floor. He then gathers fine sand to give the sculpture a more vibrant look and colouring. Finally, he decorates the ridges and valleys within the circles with fragments of seashells.
Congo’s paintings showed some animals not only liked creating art, but had a sense when projects were finished (Credit: Ron Burton/Keystone/Getty Images)
The sculptures take up to nine days to construct, and after they are finished females come to inspect them. If they like what they see, then the females lay eggs in the centre of the circle for the males to fertilise.
So far, no functional or adaptive purpose for the circles have been found, suggesting that the females could simply be attracted to the aesthetic beauty of the geometric shapes.
Pufferfish, it turns out, aren’t the only animals to create interesting sculptures.
In 1872, the explorer Odoardo Beccari became the first European to climb the Vogelkop mountains of New Guinea and meet members of the Arfak tribe. While there, he observed a series of beautifully decorated huts in the forest which he assumed were the work of the villagers. In front of each hut was a little garden decorated with moss and more than a hundred colourful objects including fruits, fresh flowers, mushrooms and beetle skeletons.
Some species of bower bird even paint their bowers using crushed fruit
Remarkably the beautiful huts were not constructed by humans at all, but rather a bird – the Vogelkop Garden Bowerbird to be precise. Since then more than 20 species of bowerbird have been discovered in Australia, New Guinea and the nearby islands.
In each case the males of the species build beautifully decorated structures, known as bowers, to entice females. The bowers consist of tall avenues of densely thatched sticks woven together with moss. The avenues open onto larger flat areas or courts which are adorned with shells, acorns, fresh fruits, flowers and even sometimes butterfly wings. Bowers located near to human villages can be adorned with items such as car keys, bottle tops, toothbrushes, spectacles and false teeth. Some species of bower bird even paint their bowers using crushed fruit, charcoal or even laundry powder stolen from nearby human habitats.
The females inspect the bowers before choosing their favourite, but what exactly are they looking for?
“One aspect is the shape and the size of the avenue, and also the number of ornaments and the visual contrast between them,” says John Endler, evolutionary biologist and emeritus professor at Deakin University in Australia.
Bowerbirds with dull plumage tend to build more impressive collections, studies suggest (Credit: Samuel Moore/Getty Images)
The regular geometric patterns and avenues could also create an optical illusion known as forced perspective. which could serve to attract the female’s attention.
“The male also performs a kind of visual display where he moves colourful objects quickly across the female’s visual field so they see it quickly and then it disappears,” says Endler.
“All these sorts of interesting visual effects serve to attract and hold the female’s attention.”
So does this prove that bowerbirds have an aesthetic sense?
It’s certainly true that individual bowerbirds have their own tastes and preferences when it comes to materials and colour. Each item is placed with great care and precision, and if any objects are moved the birds return them to their original place. Younger birds also appear to learn how to build the most attractive bowers, either through trial and error, or by watching more experienced birds. Bowerbirds also spend a great deal of time and effort building their bowers and defending them from rival males.
Appreciating art
While the list of creatures who produce art is relatively small, there are other animals who, it could be argued, seem to appreciate beauty.
In 1995, a team of psychologists led by Shigeru Watanabe, a professor of psychology from Keio University in Tokyo, showed that pigeons could be taught to discriminate Claude Monet artworks from Pablo Picasso.
When given the choice, individual Java sparrows prefer to spend time perched near specific paintings
Further research found that koi fish were capable of distinguishing the music of blues singer John Lee Hooker from that of Johann Sebastian Bach. Goldfish can also be taught to distinguish between Bach and Igor Stravinsky.
However, this simply shows that animals can be trained to differentiate artworks. It doesn’t prove that they appreciate or gain pleasure from them.
Nevertheless, a separate study by Watanabe seemed to suggest that birds can experience pleasure from art. He found that, when given the choice, individual Java sparrows prefer to spend time perched near specific paintings. Five out of seven sparrows demonstrated a preference for Cubist paintings over Impressionist artworks, while three also seemed to prefer Japanese paintings over impressionist pieces.
“As we can’t ask animals whether they enjoy or find pleasure in art, in experimental psychology we look a property called reinforcement instead,” says Watanabe.
“If an animal does something in order to see art or to hear music, then that art and music must have reinforcing properties.”
Peacock’s tails may seem cumbersome, but they play a vital part in mating rituals (Credit: Georgette Douwma/Getty Images)
“Many species of birds, mammals and even fish can discriminate between different paintings or pieces of music, but few find them reinforcing.”
Monkeys may be one such group. Humans often prefer symmetrical patterns to random ones, and it turns out that certain species of monkey do too. In 1957 German biologist Bernhard Rensch presented capuchin monkeys with small squares of cardboard showing either symmetrical patterns, such as parallel lines or concentric squares, or “irregular patterns of similar black and white content”. Over hundreds of trials, the capuchin showed a significant bias for picking up the patterned cards. Rensch believed that this was because the monkeys possessed “certain basic aesthetic feelings”.
Another species that does appear to appreciate beauty and aesthetics is the peacock. The peacock’s tail is useless for flight. It is so large that it is a physical burden to carry around. It also is more likely to attract the attention of predators. Nevertheless, if a male is to have any hope of attracting a mate he must invest in the costly, brightly coloured plumage. Why? Because female peahens find it sexy. The preference is so strong that it is a major driving force of evolution in the peacock, leading to more extravagant tail feathers over time.
The Art of Painting and Drawing Animals
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Thousands of years after man first recorded his impressions of animals on cave walls, artists are still attempting to reproduce images of these incredibly diverse creatures of land, sea, and air. This guide by an award-winning artist is designed to aid painters at all skill levels to draw and paint wildlife with precision and accuracy.
Fredric Sweney begins by using the horse as the basis for understanding the physical structure of animals, while the wild duck serves as the model for the configuration, wing construction, and flight characteristics of birds. More than 260 illustrations, many in full color, along with step-by-step details, make it easier and more enjoyable than ever to paint dogs, cats, oxen, deer, bears, birds, goats, and more exotic animals — in every size and shape.
An invaluable guide to zoological anatomy, ideal for beginners as well as advanced artists, this complete, practical reference will also serve as an excellent resource for resolving commonplace problems of artistic composition.
Republication of the Englewood Cliffs, 1983 edition.
| Availability | Usually ships in 24 to 48 hours |
| ISBN 10 | 0486844781 |
| ISBN 13 | 9780486844787 |
| Author/Editor | Fredric Sweney |
| Grade level | 6 and Up (ages 11 – 111) |
| Page Count | 192 |
| Dimensions | 8 1/4 x 10 7/8 |
