From Pat Scott Vincent
Valerio Cugia wonders whether preferences for different types of art may vary with geography (16 October, p 27). Jerome Kagan suggests in his book The Temperamental Thread: How genes, culture, time and luck make us who we are, which you reviewed this year (24 April, p 47), that the different preferences for styles of painting between people of European compared to Asian descent is related to differences in the alleles they inherit.
To quote: “More paintings and photographs by Asian artists, compared with European artists, depict many objects, plants or animals in the backgrounds of scenes that illustrate a central object. By contrast European and American artists place a person, animal, or object of significance in the foreground and add fewer other objects.” Kagan quotes supporting studies that show this preference holds true amongst American and Japanese students.
I personally prefer European art, but get most excited by cave paintings. Drawing together these threads with your report on the worldwide use of certain symbols in cave paintings (20 February, p 30) might lead to interesting leaps in the understanding of art appreciation from an evolutionary perspective.
Brighton, East Sussex, UK
