My last post may have been taken out of context I didn't say human artists had to be trained in every brush stroke. I meant to infer that if human beings were automatically born with the creative talent of, say, Picasso we wouldn't have any use for Art departments. They are not, however, and artistic creativity, like any other discipline is learned and encouraged in our education system. Artistic techniques learned in an art class are rather advanced modes of expressing creativity when considering our primary ability.

The initial cognitive development that is required is taught and encouraged in us from a young age. Furthermore, human brains have likely evolved over thousands of years to increase our creative capacity.

You can see this in Neanderthal cave paintings. They are hardly what we would consider 'impressive' nowadays in an artistic sense. They are little more than a child's drawing in comparison to something intricate like Realist art, for example. If you then go to Medieval Europe and look at the art then (ala the Bayeux Tapestry) you will notice that the figures are distinctly more human looking but lack perspective. Put into historical context however, they are both quite impressive examples of art.

What I'm saying is yes, elephants would need to be taught how to paint for two reasons. Firstly, there is no easily available art such as picture books or encouragement in the wild to exhibit this creativity and secondly were they an inherently creative species they lack an easily available mode of expressing any creativity they might have (no ability to create a paint brush, mix primitive paints from ground up minerals etc.)

It would be interesting to see if a baby elephant was brought up and taught to paint, whether they would ever deviate from the brush strokes they are taught.

Either way you can't say they are not comparable to humans in their creative capacity given the evolutionary time frame and cognitive development given to most human babies, just like I can't say they they are. Obviously an Elephant would not stand up to a human at present in a test of creativity.

I have a feeling we are of like minds on this one though.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/06/2008 11:56AM by istirith.