Every Dog Has Its Artist
Collecting Art, take a look A compassionate new book explores how canine companions across Western art history break down the emotional boundaries between species. About two months ago, footage of trembling beagles imprisoned at a biomedical research facility in Wisconsin, and of the tear-gassed activists who tried to rescue them, went viral. Photojournalists captured the dogs huddled together. They look into the cameras. They look at us — the humans who put them there. It feels dreadful to return the gaze, to acknowledge the intense pain one species can cause another. Yet, it is essential to do so, as Thomas W. Laqueur argues in a new book. The Dogs Gaze: A Visual History 2026 offers an expansive, accessible survey of canine presence in Western art from the Palaeolithic period onward. Brilliant, full-color reproductions of 250 artworks fill the books pages as evidence of what Laqueur terms an aesthetics of sociability. A dog, he contends, is an animal that, because it sees with us,...