The Dog’s Gaze: A Visual History

Historian Laqueur (The Work of the Dead) traces in this delightful survey the long history of dogs appearing in artworks. After a slow start in which Laqueur painstakingly explains why he chose to focus on dogs rather than cats or horses, which have less “visual intimacy” with humans, the account accelerates into a whirlwind tour through centuries of art history, beginning in 9000 BCE with “massive” Saudi Arabian rock panels featuring dogs hunting alongside humans. He proceeds to spotlight an astonishing diversity of pup portrayals, including mythological mutts like Adonis’s hounds in Titian’s 1553–1554 painting Venus and Adonis; devoted canine companions, whether symbolically “keeping a dejected figure company” in Albrecht Dürer’s 1514 engraving Melancholia or lounging in artists’ studios; and less frequently depicted “bad dogs,” which “are almost always a proxy for bad humans,” as seen in anti-slavery artwork where vicious canines attack enslaved people as proxies for “slave-owning masters.” Drawing from a staggering wealth of examples, the author successfully uncovers the overlapping uses and meanings of dogs in art, while interspersing the account with charming asides about artists’ relationships with the dogs that appear in their work (including Pablo Picasso’s “beloved dachshund Lump”). It’s an eye-catching homage to man’s best friend. (May)