Monkey Painting

Rating:
Summary: academia-cruising at its best
Review: Interested in art? Interested in critical sociology/ geography/ cultural studies? This book is damn fine, much more than I expected. Moving on from a controversial a subject as primate-painting in the early sixties I expected a re-hash of naive socio-biological studies, but was pleasantly surprised. This book is enormously thoughtful, revovling around two main sections. The first gives historical and cultural context to the phenomenon of ape-painting; a frank and non-sentimental account which nevertheless inspires faith in the extension of moral rights to the animal kingdom... The second section is a more detailed analysis of the aesthetics of chimp art, especially of the 'origianl' chimp artist, Congo. Many questions are opened, few answered, as is to be expected - and desired - of a book in such a cutting edge field; I can only hope it is the first of many such books...