Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Dog's Gaze: A Visual History

The Dog's Gaze: A Visual History

Laqueur, Thomas W.

Hardcover

Art HistoryGeneral ArtPets: Dogs

Publisher Price: $45.00

ISBN10: 0593652797
ISBN13: 9780593652794
Publisher: Penguin Press
Published: Jun 2 2026
Pages: 400
Weight: 2.05
Height: 1.40 Width: 6.30 Depth: 9.30
Language: English
It is difficult to think of many other books that are at once so brilliant, so wonderfully entertaining, and so moving . . . The Dog's Gaze is full of exuberant insights about our canine friends, about art, and about the human condition. --Stephen Greenblatt

A splendid blend of histories: natural, cultural, and artistic . . . A delight for dog-loving art connoisseurs, and vice versa. --Kirkus (starred review)

From award-winning cultural historian, an enlightening and unique 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

Long 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 Paleolithic 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 Laqueur reveals, dogs in art are our social doppelgängers, our companions in looking and being.

Richly illustrated and lovingly written, The Dog's Gaze is a unique visual history that examines the remarkable social bond between two species, shedding new light on the human condition through the eyes of our canine companions.

Also in

Art History

View All