Darwinian Aesthetics
Parking Lot Savannah
Denis Dutton, in his book “The Art Instinct”, presents the case that people from Africa to Alaska prefer savannah-like landscape images; that we are wired by evolution to gain comfort from views similar to those beheld by our distant ancestors as they chose to walk out of the forest on two legs rather than four.
Apparently, this archaic sense of beauty is so deeply bound into us that even the parking lots of our upscale strip malls resonate with it, complete with low branching trees to facilitate escape from predators and careless drivers.
While there might be much here to make Homo habilis feel at home, he or she would probably not recognize the discarded soda bottle and cup.
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The photograph was taken in the Spring of 2005. Austin’s record breaking 2011 Summer has made outdoor photography a difficult proposition for someone with multiple sclerosis like myself. Instead I am going back and reevaulting older images that I passed over at the time, like this one.
