When: Monday, May 30, 2022, 6:00 PM - 7:30 PMWhere: Online
Public Lecture - Canines in Solitude: the Gaze of the Dog in Western Art
'With their parallel lives,' writes John Berger, animals 'offer man a companionship which is different from any offered by human exchange. Different because it is a companionship offered to the loneliness of man as a species.' This lecture argues that the gaze of the dog, grounded in evolution and appropriated by visual artists in the western tradition, offers a way of representing being seen - being regarded as worth regard - as a defence against loneliness both as a species and as social beings. Dogs are cultural doppelgängers of the human, creatures whose ways of seeing and very presence stand in a metonymic relationship to how we - artists and those who look at art - see in the world and want to be seen.
This month, Professor Thomas Laqueur is the IHSS Distinguished Visiting Fellow with the 'Pathologies of Solitude' project at Queen Mary, University of London.
This lecture will take place online (Zoom).
All are welcome but booking is required.