EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVES ON WHAT WOMEN PAINT.

The overarching premise of this paper is that the tenets of Darwinian literary criticism (e.g., Carroll, 1995) can be applied to other human artifacts, enabling us to better understand human's evolved motives, emotions and behaviors in the realms of popular music, cinema, and art. Here we focus on Western paintings created between 1700 and 1940. Unlike past researchers who have examined the evolutionary foundations of art, we specifically concentrate on paintings by women in order to explore whether their works reflect issues that are specific to women's evolutionary history. Our analysis reveals that women tend to paint portraits of self and others, create work with themes of motherhood and family, and paint still life and landscapes. These themes are consistent with the evolved motivations of women, namely the establishment and maintenance of alliances and family relations using depictions of motherhood, family life, and portraits, or more generally, the display of private over public life through the use of still life more commonly than landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]