Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Natural history, now and way back then: (
top
) Fate Bell Shelter, an Archaic site in Terrell County,
Texas, and (
bottom
) the image of a bleeding cat from the shelter's back wall. (Photos: H. W.
Greene)
Nonetheless, as Boyd explains, much of what's been done with paints, charcoal, and
other media, including prehistoric pictographs as well as some of the world's most fam-
ous paintings, doesn't qualify as art under certain present-day definitions. “Fine arts”
arose as a French phrase in the mid-1700s, and the English word “art” was first defined
with a narrow, contemporary meaning in 1880; art as abstractions to be viewed, evalu-
ated, and appreciated is an even more recent, almost exclusively Western formulation,
coincident with disdain for utility. As Boyd points out, this leads to a motivational dis-
