Ape Artists of the 1950's

Ape Artists of the 1950's

"Congo’s favourite design was a radiating fan pattern and once he had become familiar with this, he started to vary it, splitting it in two, reversing it, curving it, stippling it, and even adding a subsidiary fan. He kept his lines within the area of the paper and tried to avoid going over the edges. And he knew when a picture was finished, refusing to continue until a new sheet was offered to him.

He was never given any reward for his paintings. Even at the level of he chimpanzee brain, it was clearly ‘art for art’s sake’, and attempts to stop him painting before a picture was complete led to temper tantrums and screaming fits. At the peak of his picture making, the intensity with which Congo concentrated on his work was astonishing...

The importance of these works by Great Apes is that they help us to understand the very ancient preoccupation with pattern making that has been demonstrated by the human species all over the globe. They may only display the germ of an aesthetic impulse, but the fact that they display one at all is frankly amazing."