The beginnings of art involved several different processes: the emergence of, recognition of, and marking of individuality; mark-making such that humans at the time expected there to be meaning even though it was indeterminate; and the first faltering steps in the removal of that indeterminacy of meaning. I have shown that we can tease out several crucial features that characterize art ever since. Art is closely involved in overcoming three tyrannies: of distance, of place and of time. Art is used to define individuality; its engagement in ritual and the storytelling that allows teaching; the involvement of people and groups to locate power to themselves; and the first steps in the use of scenes to reduce the indeterminacy of the marks—steps that would, ultimately, make available to seers the mysteries of art which individuals otherwise used as resources of power. Art was involved, however slightly, in the process of overcoming the powers of institutions, but once those were overcome, professionals in the field set about creating new institutions of power especially for art, and the more recent history of art has been about overcoming the new power constraints.