How do our senses help us to understand the world? This question, which preoccupied Enlightenment thinkers, also emerged as a key theme in depictions of animals in eighteenth-century art. This book examines the ways in which painters such as Chardin, as well as sculptors, porcelain modelers, and other decorative designers portrayed animals as sensing subjects who physically confirmed the value of material experience.
The sensual style known today as the Rococo encouraged the proliferation of animals as exemplars of empirical inquiry, ranging from the popular subject of the monkey artist to the alchemical wonders of the life-sized porcelain animals created for the Saxon court. Examining writings on sensory knowledge by La Mettrie, Condillac, Diderot and other philosophers side by side with depictions of the animal in art, Cohen argues that artists promoted the animal as a sensory subject while also validating the material basis of their own professional practice.
- ISBN10 1350203580
- ISBN13 9781350203587
- Publish Date 11 February 2021
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 12 October 2022
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Imprint Bloomsbury Visual Arts
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 264
- Language English