Appreciating Beauty: A Pulse That Leaps Through Time and Species - Origin Excerpt from Jane Baron

"In the quiet hush of a gallery, or the dappled light of a forest, we are drawn to beauty—sometimes in the bold sweep of color, sometimes in the subtle curve of a petal or the play of shadow on stone. As a fine art photographer, I have always believed that the act of seeing, truly seeing, is a form of reverence. It is a trait we often claim as uniquely human, a mark of our creativity and our longing to leave something of ourselves behind. But as we look more closely, we find that the impulse to create and appreciate beauty is not ours alone.

The story of art begins deep in the earth, in the flickering torchlight of ancient caves. In 1879, a young girl named Maria Sanz de Sautuola wandered into the darkness of Altamira and looked up to find the ceiling alive with painted aurochs—testament to the Magdalenian people’s vision, their hands reaching across millennia. Yet even these masterpieces are not the true beginning. Long before Homo sapiens, Neanderthals carved patterns into bone, and Homo erectus etched zig-zags into shells, leaving behind the first whispers of artistic thought.

What compels a being to make a mark, to shape the world into something more than function? The answer, it seems, is not limited to our species. In the 1950s, a chimpanzee named Congo took up a pencil and, with deliberate intention, filled page after page with abstract forms. His art was not a trick or a mimicry, but a genuine exploration—he knew when a piece was finished, and he protested if interrupted. His works, collected and admired by artists like Picasso, challenge us to reconsider the boundaries of creativity.

Beyond the studio and the zoo, the natural world is alive with artistry. The male pufferfish, with no audience but the sea, spends days sculpting intricate circles in the sand, each ridge and valley a silent invitation to a mate. The bowerbird, hidden in the forests of New Guinea, builds elaborate avenues and courts, decorating them with flowers, berries, and even stolen trinkets—each arrangement a unique expression, each bower a living gallery. These creations serve a purpose, yes, but their extravagance and individuality suggest something more: a drive to captivate, to delight, to be chosen not just for strength, but for beauty.

Even among animals who do not create, there are hints of aesthetic preference. Sparrows linger near certain paintings, monkeys choose symmetry over chaos, and peahens are drawn to the dazzling display of a peacock’s tail. Is this art? Is it pleasure? Or is it, perhaps, a shared language of appreciation, a recognition of harmony and contrast, of color and form?

As I compose my photographs, I am reminded that beauty is not a luxury, but a necessity—a thread that connects us to the world and to each other. It is found in the ancient handprint on a cave wall, in the careful placement of a blue glass bead in a bowerbird’s court, in the quiet joy of a chimpanzee with a brush. To appreciate beauty is to be alive to wonder, to possibility, to the endless conversation between artist and observer, human and animal, past and present.

Perhaps, in the end, the legacy of art is not just in what we create, but in our capacity to see—to honor the fleeting, the extraordinary, the beautiful, wherever it appears."

Also in News