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The Dog’s Gaze by Thomas Laqueur review
A clever and beautiful survey of dogs in painting, with a brilliant interpretation of their role at its heart
TL;DR
- The dog's companionship with humans is argued to represent the boundary between nature and culture.
- Dogs in art provide symbolic resonance and second-order meaning to paintings.
- The "dog's gaze" in art can either observe the scene or engage directly with the viewer.
- Velázquez's mastiff in Las Meninas grounds the composition and offers a knowing glance to the viewer.
- Picasso replaced Velázquez's mastiff with his dachshund Lump in his series riffing on Las Meninas, giving it a "brazen" gaze.
- Veronese included dogs in "The Wedding Feast at Cana" to allow viewers to relate to the sacred scene through earthly desires.
- Veronese faced the Inquisition for including a dog in his "Last Supper" but retained it after renaming the painting "The Feast in the House of Levi".