The Dog's Gaze

The Dog's GazeWhat do dogs do in art? A dazzlingly original cultural history from the Cundill Prize-winning historianLong before the phrase 'man's best friend' became common parlance, dogs were already standing beside us in art as in life. In The Dog's Gaze, the historian Thomas W. Laqueur invites us to explore why they feature more than any other animal in the ways in which we picture ourselves and our stories.Dogs have been ubiquitous in the worldmaking of visual artists as far back as the Palaeolithic age. Looking across the western tradition, from Giotto to Goya and Rubens to Rego, Laqueur shows what their presence - as hunting partners, beloved friends and even conduits to the afterlife - reveals about our own ways of seeing and how we want to be remembered. Far from being mere motifs, dogs are an integral and intentional element of the images in which they appear: they provide narrative coherence; they look out and bear witness, often on the artist's behalf; they illuminate our understanding of morality and melancholy and some, like us, become celebrities. Indeed, as the author shows, dogs in art are our social doppelgangers, our companions in looking and being.