the problem of beauty (for Evolution/evolution)

From Zbigniew Janowski's review in First Things-- of Denis Dutton's The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution...

The human artistic drive is as old as the species itself....Objects are made to be useful, but what produces beautiful objects?

This is the question that belongs to the difficult realm of aesthetics, and Denis Dutton’s Art is an attempt to explain the origin of creativity by applying the Darwinian theory of evolution to art.... Instinct

Dutton’s book is rich in a variety of topics, and it is written with clarity, covering such areas as “landscape and longing,” “art and human nature,” “what is art?” “art and natural selection,” and “art and human self-domestication.” Not all are of equal value, and not all seem to support a Darwinian interpretation. The evolutionary claim, which Dutton makes very forcefully in his introduction, seems to be so watered down by side discussions that the interesting thesis ends up looking somewhat marginal...