Animals In Art And Thought

Originally published in 1971, Animals in Art and Thought discusses the ways in which animals have been used by man in art and literature. The book looks at how they have been used to symbolise religious, social and political beliefs, as well as their pragmatic use by hunters, sportsmen, and farmers. The book discusses these various attitudes in a survey which ranges from prehistoric cave art to the later Middle Ages. The book is especially concerned with uncovering the latent, as well as the manifest meanings of animal art, and presents a detailed examination of the literary and archaeological monuments of the periods covered in the book. The book discusses the themes of Creation myths of the pagan and Christian religion, the contribution of the animal art of the ancient contribution of the animal art of the ancient Orient to the development of the Romanesque and gothic styles in Europe, the use of beast fables in social or political satire, and the heroic associations of animals in medieval chivalry.

Animals have always been compelling subjects for artists, but the rise of animal advocacy and posthumanist thought has prompted a reconsideration of the relationship between artist and animal. In this book, Steve Baker examines the work of contemporary artists who directly confront questions of animal life, treating animals not for their aesthetic qualities or as symbols of the human condition but rather as beings who actively share the world with humanity. The concerns of the artists presented in this book—Sue Coe, Eduardo Kac, Lucy Kimbell, Catherine Chalmers, Olly and Suzi, Angela Singer, Catherine Bell, and others—range widely, from the ecological to the philosophical and from those engaging with the modification of animal bodies to those seeking to further the cause of animal rights. Drawing on extensive interviews he conducted with the artists under consideration, Baker explores the vital contribution that contemporary art can make to a broader conception of animal life, emphasizing the importance of creativity and trust in both the making and understanding of these artworks. Throughout, Baker is attentive to issues of practice, form, and medium. He asks, for example, whether the animal itself could be said to be the medium in which these artists are working, and he highlights the tensions between creative practice and certain kinds of ethical demands or expectations. Featuring full-color, vivid examples of their work, Artist Animal situates contemporary artists within the wider project of thinking beyond the human, asserting art’s power to open up new ways of thinking about animals.

'Art is continually haunted by the animal', wrote Deleuze and Guattari. Over the past two decades, animals have quite literally invaded the gallery space, from Joseph Beuys' co-habiting with a coyote, Janis Kounelli's instillation of live horses, Damien Hirst's shark in formaldehyde to Mark Dion's natural history displays and Marco Evaristti's 'goldfish in a blender'. In this latest addition to the highly acclaimed 'Art and...' series, Giovanni Aloi surveys the insistent presence of animals in the world of contemporary art, exploring the leading concepts which inform this emerging practice. From exhibitions featuring live animals, to taxidermy, and interspecies communication, Giovanni Aloi explores how animals feature in modern art with a range of thought-provoking and innovative visual representations. Art and Animals challenges ideas of identity, 'otherness' and civilisation by explaining the role animals have occupied in our cultural development and illustrating their presence in the visual arts today.

Developing a phenomenology of the animal other through contemporary art

The relationship between medieval animal symbolism and the iconography of animals in the Renaissance has scarcely been studied. Filling a gap in this significant field of Renaissance culture, in general, and its art, in particular, this book demonstrates the continuity and tenacity of medieval animal interpretations and symbolism, disguised under the veil of genre, religious or mythological narrative and scientific naturalism. An extensive introduction, dealing with relevant medieval and early Renaissance sources, is followed by a series of case studies that illustrate ways in which Renaissance artists revived conventional animal imagery in unprecedented contexts, investing them with new meanings, on a social, political, ethical, religious or psychological level, often by applying exegetical methodology in creating multiple semantic and iconographic levels.Brill's Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History, vol. 2

How do our senses help us to understand the world? This question, which preoccupied Enlightenment thinkers, also emerged as a key theme in depictions of animals in eighteenth-century art. This book examines the ways in which painters such as Chardin, as well as sculptors, porcelain modelers, and other decorative designers portrayed animals as sensing subjects who physically confirmed the value of material experience. The sensual style known today as the Rococo encouraged the proliferation of animals as exemplars of empirical inquiry, ranging from the popular subject of the monkey artist to the alchemical wonders of the life-sized porcelain animals created for the Saxon court. Examining writings on sensory knowledge by La Mettrie, Condillac, Diderot and other philosophers side by side with depictions of the animal in art, Cohen argues that artists promoted the animal as a sensory subject while also validating the material basis of their own professional practice.

Eggers is one of the most notable writers of his generation, recognized for such bestselling and critically acclaimed books as A Hologram for the King, What Is the What, and The Circle. Before he embarked on his writing career, Eggers was classically trained as a draftsman and painter. He then spent many years as a professional illustrator and graphic designer before turning to writing full-time. More recently, in order to raise money for ScholarMatch, his college-access nonprofit, he returned to visual art, and the results have been exhibited in galleries and museums around the country. Usually involving the pairing of an animal with humorous or biblical text, the results are wry, oddly anthropomorphic tableaus that create a very entertaining and eccentric body of work from one of today’s leading culture makers.

Kari Weil provides a critical introduction to the field of animal studies as well as an appreciation of its thrilling acts of destabilization. Examining real and imagined confrontations between human and nonhuman animals, she charts the presumed lines of difference between human beings and other species and the personal, ethical, and political implications of those boundaries. Weil's considerations recast the work of such authors as Kafka, Mann, Woolf, and Coetzee, and such philosophers as Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, Deleuze, Agamben, Cixous, and Hearne, while incorporating the aesthetic perspectives of such visual artists as Bill Viola, Frank Noelker, and Sam Taylor-Wood and the "visual thinking" of the autistic animal scientist Temple Grandin. She addresses theories of pet keeping and domestication; the importance of animal agency; the intersection of animal studies, disability studies, and ethics; and the role of gender, shame, love, and grief in shaping our attitudes toward animals. Exposing humanism's conception of the human as a biased illusion, and embracing posthumanism's acceptance of human and animal entanglement, Weil unseats the comfortable assumptions of humanist thought and its species-specific distinctions.