Darwin, darwinizm i kultura wizualna XIX wieku
Darwin, Darwinism and the 19th-century visual culture

Summary/Abstract: The article presents selected aspects of the connections between Darwin's evolutionism and the 19th-century visual arts. The author describes Darwin's relations with his contemporary art theorists (e.g. John Ruskin, who was one of the staunchest critics of Darwinian theories), and illustrators of natural science publications. The author discusses various examples of new themes in 19th-century painting and sculpture, inspired by Darwin's theories: geological landscape, evolution of organisms, beginnings of humankind, or representations of monkeys and anthropoids in the works of the Munich based artist Gabriel von Max. Darwinian evolutionism also contributed to the development of „physiological aesthetics”, which forms part of the current of 19th-century scientific aesthetics, e.g. Grant Allen's Physiological Aesthetics (1877) or Aesthetic Evolution of Man (1880).

• Details
• Contents