Art and Sexual Selection

Art seems to have grown out of sexual selection, if so, then women should be better at discerning art, because they have needed to be acute in judging the authenticity of men, since they pay a heavier price with the long-term care of babies if they judge wrong. But the desire of men to impress women might help explain, at least unconsciously, why their are more top men artists and male art critics than women. Homosexuals in the arts, at least in these times, might also explain some of the disparities in the sexual selection-discernment hypothesis.

This gets confusing when we consider the stereotypical common man who says he hasn't a clue as to what color goes with what, especially since men are trying to impress women in sexual selection and should therefore care about the way they look. Perhaps women give central importance to the money or position a man has, at least beyond the teen years, and they just kind of overlook his lack of color harmonizing.

In any case, this connection with sexual selection is probably the way to study art origins (see The Art Instinct), which gets us away from the absurd and phony abstractions that define postmodern art. High art (low art too) can then be seen sociobiologically as an affirmation of what the group holds sacred, since the group is the main unit of selection over the long term.