"If you care about art writ large as a miraculous bounty for the world, or only for your own selfish sake, "The Art Instinct "should impress you as the most shrewd, precisely written and provocative study you'll find."--"Philadelphia Inquirer "Denis Dutton's lively, controversial "The Art Instinct "combines two contentious disciplines--art and evolutionary science--in a provocative new approach to how we think about art, from painting to literature to movies to pottery. Human tastes in the arts, Dutton argues, are evolutionary traits, not social constructs. Using forceful logic and hard evidence, Dutton overturns a century of art theory and criticism and restores the place of beauty, pleasure, and skill as artistic values.