An insightful look at art (and a hunky host's calves)

Why do we need art?

It's what makes us human, says Cambridge University lecturer Nigel Spivey, host of the five-part documentary "How Art Made The World."

Spivey says the central premise of the show — which premieres Monday night on PBS — is "that of all the defining characteristics of humanity ... none is more basic than the inclination to make art."

Spivey takes us along as he drops in at famous archeological sites around the globe to see cave paintings, petroglyphs and other ancient artifacts that offer clues to the origin of art and its purpose.

Over the millennia, artists have held different roles in society, and our interpretations of ancient art have changed. Scholars once assumed, for example, that animals depicted in cave paintings were a wish-list of what the artists hoped to kill for dinner.

More recent findings suggest that's not true. More likely, early artists were shamans, whose visions came to them in a state of trance, Spivey maintains. Similar kinds of paintings have been found in Europe, North America and Australia and tie to studies of how the visual centers of the brain respond in altered states.

In the first episode, "More Human Than Human," Spivey explores the nature of beauty and how primitive urges guide our aesthetic choices. Why does the tiny statue known as the Venus of Willendorf, created some 25,000 years ago, have such exaggerated breasts, belly and genitals? Spivey makes a case that our notion of beauty is guided by instinct, just as baby birds are drawn to whatever markings signal food — and the more, the better.

That's why representations of the human body throughout history usually are not realistic, he says, including those lovely classical Greek statues. The Greeks were known for depicting ideals of beauty, not the way people actually look. Spivey concludes: "We humans don't like reality."

A later episode examines how art and empire hooked up: Think political portraits and propaganda. In the segment "Once Upon A Time," Spivey takes special delight in showing how images can convey stories, leading up to techniques of Hollywood filmmaking.

In the final episode, Spivey looks at the human fascination with death and various ways artists across the ages have imagined it. Each one of the programs holds intriguing information on why humans make images and how those images shape us.

The drawback is the way that information is presented. Right from the hyped-up introduction, with its flashy editing and overheated rhetoric, the documentary's gimmicky style muscles in front of its subject matter.

Lines like "You'll never look at our world the same again!" and the continually swelling music distracts rather than engages.

Spivey narrates the documentary and also is the star. He's a handsome guy — the type who probably makes his female students giddy — and as "How Art Made The World" rolls along, the camera gets stuck on him.

Here's a dapper Spivey touching down by helicopter or dangling in front of a cliff in a hardhat. Here he's leaping out of a small boat with his suit on, pants rolled up — the camera pans in on his bare calves as he walks across the beach. Every promotional picture for the series focuses on him, as well. I just kept thinking how expensive it must have been to send him all over the world to get these shots.

Then there's his voice. Spivey seems to be doing a bad imitation of the speech inflections and documentary style of that passionate eccentric David Attenborough. So it was strange when, in the fourth episode, Attenborough made an appearance himself, as one of the experts.

Besides the speech affectations, Spivey talks so slowly and deliberately, it's like listening to a recording at the wrong speed. I felt like he was talking down to his audience, as if we aren't quite capable of understanding normal speech.

Occasionally, Spivey also takes grand leaps with his favorite theories, boldly presenting hypotheses as fact. He likes to make statements like "the oldest" and "the first," when I kept wanting him to add, "that we know about."

Overall, the series assumes a very minimal level of knowledge in its audience. (He explains, for example, that a trance is an altered state of consciousness.) I assume the shows are aimed at students: Maybe the theory is you have to hit them over the heads to get them to pay attention.

In fact, "How Art Made The World" is the kind of programming that likely would appeal to young audiences, but with a 10 p.m. airtime, it's doubtful many will be watching.

If all these complaints about presentation are making you wonder whether "How Art Made The World" really is worth watching — it is.

You'll see great sights and get some good insights into the essential role of art in human society.

Sheila Farr: sfarr@seattletimes.com