A meditation on the presence of dogs in art, from the Paleolithic era to the present, and what our intertwined human-canine relationship reveals about human nature.
I’m still haunted by our ailing, elderly dog’s large, trusting, liquid eyes looking out at us in the moments before her death ... That gaze is one I will never forget, and I turned to a new book on that very subject, Thomas W. Laqueur’s wonderful The Dog’s Gaze: A Visual History, with shivering gratitude ... Laqueur wants to tell us why dogs matter, demystifying his subject while respecting its mystique ... Laqueur’s book has no particular thesis to hobbyhorse for, and yet a unified-field theory of aesthetic dogginess might be distilled from its pages.
A handsome work of scholarship ... In this lavishly illustrated book, filled with color reproductions of paintings and photographs, Laqueur explores how dogs sit, stay, and roll over in Western art — from paintings by Titian, Rembrandt, and Winslow Homer to images from the modern era.
A clever and beautiful survey of dogs in painting, with a brilliant interpretation of their role at its heart ... Luminous ... Laqueur takes us on a wonderfully illustrated tour of dogs in art ... By the end of this clever, beautiful book, Laqueur has persuasively made his point that the dog’s function in western art is to provide an entry-point or alter ego for viewers who might otherwise feel overwhelmed or outclassed.
