Art Animals And Experience

Elizabeth Sutton, using a phenomenological approach, investigates how animals in art invite viewers to contemplate human relationships to the natural world. Using Rembrandt van Rijn’s etching of The Presentation in the Temple (c. 1640), Joseph Beuys’s social sculpture I Like America and America Likes Me (1974), archaic rock paintings at Horseshoe Canyon, Canyonlands National Park, and examples from contemporary art, this book demonstrates how artists across time and cultures employed animals to draw attention to the sensory experience of the composition and reflect upon the shared sensory awareness of the world.

Elizabeth Sutton, using a phenomenological approach, investigates how animals in art invite viewers to contemplate human relationships to the natural world. Using Rembrandt van Rijn's etching of The Presentation in the Temple (c. 1640), Joseph Beuys's social sculpture I Like America and America Likes Me (1974), archaic rock paintings at Horseshoe Canyon, Canyonlands National Park, and examples from contemporary art, this book demonstrates how artists across time and cultures employed animals to draw attention to the sensory experience of the composition and reflect upon the shared sensory awareness of the world.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Color Plates -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Relational Ethics and Aesthetics -- Being and Thinking with Art and Animals -- Between Presence and Absence -- An Ethical Art History -- 2 Dogged Flesh: Rembrandt's Presentation in the Temple, c. 1640 -- Real and Represented Dogs -- Rembrandt's Three R's: Radical, Reflective, Revelatory -- The Rhetoric of Etching -- Fleshly Experience -- Past Made Present -- 3 Glances with Wolves: Encounters with Little John and Joseph Beuys -- Entangled Encounters -- Seeing and Being with Little John -- Presencing Other Worlds -- Imaginative Empathy -- Gathering Together in the Gap -- 4 Glimpse into the Unknown: Contemporary Taxidermy and Photography -- Spaces Between: Yellow and Taza -- Respecting Unknowns -- Dominance, Submission, and Freedom: Inert and Progression of Regression -- Death and the Object (Ars longa vita brevis est) -- From Hierarchy to Horizontality -- 5 "We Are All Connected": Experiencing Art and Nature at Horseshoe Canyon -- Guided by Dogs and Children -- "We Are All Connected"--Dwelling with Dogs and Earth -- Accessing Histories with Attentive Care -- Art and Earth as Places of Emergence -- 6 Caring for Art and Animals -- Bibliography -- Index

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.

This book is one of a series of volumes resulting from the World Archaeological Congress, September 1986 which addressed world archaeology in its widest sense, investigating how people lived in the past and how and why changes took place to result in the forms of society and culture which exist now. The series brought together archaeologists and anthropologists from many parts of the world, academics from contingent disciplines, and also non-academics from a wide range of cultural backgrounds who could lend their own expertise to the discussions. This book is an exploration of the way in which the animal world features in the works of art of a variety of cultures of different times and places. Contributors have adopted a variety of perspectives for looking at the complex ways in which past and present humans have interrelated with beings they classify as animals. Some of the approaches are predominantly economic and ecological, some are symbolic and others philosophical or theological. All these different views are included in the interpretation of the artworks of the past, revealing some of the foci and inspirations of cultural attitudes to animals. Originally published 1989.

Animal rights activists today regularly use visual imagery in their efforts to shape the public’s understanding of what it means to be “kind,” “cruel,” and “inhumane” toward animals. Art for Animals explores the early history of this form of advocacy through the images and the people who harnessed their power. Following in the footsteps of earlier-formed organizations like the RSPCA and ASPCA, animal advocacy groups such as the Victoria Street Society for the Protection of Animals from Vivisection made significant use of visual art in literature and campaign materials. But, enabled by new and improved technologies and techniques, they took the imagery much further than their predecessors did, turning toward vivid, pointed, and at times graphic depictions of human-animal interactions. Keri Cronin explains why the activist community embraced this approach, details how the use of such tools played a critical role in educational and reform movements in the United States, Canada, and England, and traces their impact in public and private spaces. Far from being peripheral illustrations of points articulated in written texts or argued in impassioned speeches, these photographs, prints, paintings, exhibitions, “magic lantern” slides, and films were key components of animal advocacy at the time, both educating the general public and creating a sense of shared identity among the reformers. Uniquely focused on imagery from the early days of the animal rights movement and filled with striking visuals, Art for Animals sheds new light on the history and development of modern animal advocacy.

A valuable guide by a well-known teacher and artist, this volume abounds in expert advice on methods and techniques for drawing animals, offering 26 lessons with step-by-step drawings of wild and domestic creatures. Author Hugh Laidman directed the U.S. Marine Corps art program, was commissioned by the National Gallery of Art to do work for NASA, and was a successful syndicated cartoonist. In Drawing Animals, his breadth of skill and experience has been successfully distilled into a concise, easy-to-follow and beautifully illustrated guide. Laidman offers knowledgeable advice on methods and techniques before proceeding to the heart of the book: expertly rendered instructional drawings of more than two dozen animals, from cats and dogs to elephants and gorillas. The emphasis throughout the text is on understanding animal anatomy and behavior as a guide to creating natural, expressive drawings, while developing an individual style and approach. Artists at all levels, beginner to expert, will find this book a source of inspiration as well as instruction.

This is a collection of fifteen essays which expose weaknesses in western epistemological frames of reference that for centuries have limited our views, and, thus, our experiences of animal being, including our own. The volume contributes to current discussions of new ways of seeing the other inhabitants of this world and more effective ways of sharing the world with them. The contributors draw on and complement the growing field of ecocriticism, but because the contributors draw on an array of disciplinary and cultural perspectives, it will appeal to a wide audience, ranging from literary scholars, philosophers, art historians, anthropologists, and cultural historians (including graduate and undergraduate students in all these disciplines), to laypersons interested in nature writing and environmental issues.