NATURE 



69 



THURSDAY, DECEMBER 26, 1895. 



THE EVOLUTION OF ART. 



Evolution in Art : as illustrated by the Life-histories of 



Designs. By Alfred C. Haddon, Professor of Zoology, 



Royal College of Science, Dublin. Pp. xviii -|- 364. 



(London : Walter Scott, Limited, 1895.) 



THIS little book answers admirably to the idea of the 

 Contemporary Science Series, of which it forms 

 part, in being at once a work of original research and a 

 popularisation of the subject. It is an example of the 

 scientific method as applied to the history of art. That 

 method, as cannot be too often repeated, consists 

 essentially in patient accumulation of facts, and their 

 classification according to their observed connections. 

 The inferences which are drawn, after this process has 

 been gone through, are trustworthy in direct ratio with 

 the accuracy with which the facts have been observed 

 and recorded and the extent of the area over which they 

 have been collected. 



The history of art is a most attractive subject ; but 

 until the last few years almost every thing written upon 

 it had relation only to the art of very advanced com- 

 munities, and for the most part only to a small depart- 

 ment of that art. Hence little or no light was thi'own 

 upon the beginnings of human art ; and only within 

 limited provinces was any attempt made to trace its 

 development and decay. The study of anthropology has 

 effected a revolution in this, as in many other depart- 

 ments of thought. We now see that, as Prof. Haddon 

 puts it, " in order to understand civilised art we must 

 study barbaric art, and to elucidate this savage art must 

 be investigated." We must, indeed, go back to the 

 beginnings ; or if we cannot literally do this, we must 

 seek the earlier stages of art in circumstances as nearly 

 akin as possible to those which first started it on its 

 career. This is what Prof. Haddon has done. A biologist 

 before he became an anthropologist, he brought to 

 anthropological investigation a trained scientific sense. 

 While on a zoological mission to Torres Straits he came 

 in contact with the natives of the smaller islands, as well 

 IS of New Guinea itself, and was impressed with the 

 exceeding interest of the anthropological data offered 

 by tribes of savages as yet little corrupted by civilisation. 

 Having both on the spot and, since his return, in the 

 museums of Europe analysed and compared their artistic 

 productions, he takes the art of this corner of the world 

 as the point of departure for a larger inquiry. His in- 

 vestigations among the natives themselves enable him to 

 speak with authority as to the meaning of their artistic 

 motives, and to add the external witness of the people 

 who produce the works to the internal witness of the 

 works themselves. It was the generic differences 

 between the art of one district in New Guinea and that 

 of another district, which first drew his attention to the 

 subject, and impressed upon him the truth on which he 

 rightly insists that, in order to understand the art of any 

 pattern, type, design, or motive whatever, its life-history 

 must be studied ; for every pattern, every type has a 

 life-history, just as every species and every individual in 

 the natural world has a life-history. And for this pur- 

 NO. 1365, VOL. 53] 



pose every pattern and every type must be studied 

 locally ; that is ro say, if the student be not actually on 

 the spot, he must, in the first instance at least, confine 

 his inquiries within the sphere of prevalence of the 

 particular pattern he is studying, and not wander to 

 different countries where similar patterns are to be 

 found, which may spring from wholly different artistic 

 motives. 



Guided by these principles, the author begins by 

 examining the decorative art of British New Guinea, 

 dividing it into five regions, in which five several styles 

 are respectively predominant. Of these, the materials 

 at present available do not admit of a decisive opinion 

 on the origin and motives of the art of the Hy River. 

 The same observation applies to a great extent to the 

 elaborate art of the Central District. In the other cases, 

 the motives are seen to be a representation of some 

 natural form, which becomes in course of frequent 

 repetition degraded, until it assumes patterns where the 

 original form is wholly unrecognisable without having 

 the intermediate stages before the eye. The most in- 

 teresting of these patterns are derivatives from the 

 human face and from the head of the sacred frigate- 

 bird. 



Prof. Haddon then passes to a more general investiga- 

 tion of the material of which decorative patterns are 

 made. He divides it into the decorative transformation 

 and transference of artificial objects, and the decorative 

 transformation of natural objects. In this chapter he is 

 of course largely dependent upon the works of his pre- 

 decessors ; but he is able often to reinforce their con- 

 clusions from his own observations. In the following 

 chapter he discusses the reasons which impel men to 

 decorate objects. These he classifies into the aesthetic 

 impulse, or desire for beauty ; the desire to give inform- 

 ation, including a summary account of the passage of 

 picture-writing into alphabetical signs ; the accumulation 

 of wealth, by which objects originally of use, and there- 

 fore valuable, became through artistic treatment valueless 

 for practical purposes, while they retained a more or less 

 factitious value as symbols of wealth, and acquired at 

 the same time an aesthetic value in consequence of the 

 pains and skill spent upon them ; and lastly, magical 

 and religious motives. In this last section. Prof. 

 Haddon's reputation as a student of folk-lore, or the 

 psychological side of anthropology, gives his opinions 

 great weight; and the conclusions of earlier inquirers, 

 which his cautious reasoning leads him to support, must 

 be regarded as, in the present state of our knowledge, 

 established. 



Finally, the author devotes a chapter to a full vindica- 

 tion of the scientific method of studying decorative art, 

 and of his mode of procedure in the present volume. It 

 cannot be said that the arrangement which places this 

 chapter at the end is satisfactory. It would have been 

 more logical to place the argument for the biological 

 treatment of designs at the beginning ; and it would^ 

 moreover, have saved some repetition, and have given a 

 reader approaching the subject without previous scientific 

 study of art, a preliminary grasp of the method adopted, 

 and of the reasons for its adoption. 



It is impossible here to do justice to Prof. Haddon's 

 treatment of his subject. Although, as will be seen from 



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