Zoo: Animals in Art

by Edward Lucie-Smith

Gathers paintings that feature animals, both real and mythological, and discusses the background of each work

Genres: Art

400 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1998

About the author

John Edward McKenzie Lucie-Smith, known as Edward Lucie-Smith, is an English writer, poet, art critic, curator and broadcaster.

Lucie-Smith was born in Kingston, Jamaica, moving to the United Kingdom in 1946. He was educated at The King's School, Canterbury, and, after a little time in Paris, he read History at Merton College, Oxford from 1951 to 1954.

After serving in the Royal Air Force as an Education Officer and working as a copywriter, he became a full-time writer (as well as anthologist and photographer). He succeeded Philip Hobsbaum in organising The Group, a London-centred poets' group.

At the beginning of the 1980s he conducted several series of interviews, Conversations with Artists, for BBC Radio 3. He is also a regular contributor to The London Magazine, in which he writes art reviews. A prolific writer, he has written more than one hundred books in total on a variety of subjects, chiefly art history as well as biographies and poetry.

In addition he has curated a number of art exhibitions, including three Peter Moores projects at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool; the New British Painting (1988–90) and two retrospectives at the New Orleans Museum of Art. He is a curator of the Bermondsey Project Space.

Reviews

[J · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a book that had great promise to me since it was suppose to not only be about art but animals in art. What a great concept! Unfortunately this particular author wasn't the one for the job and it felt more like I was the one in the zoo being tormented by this book.

Although the concept was a great one I didn't like the formatting that it took for this book. The majority of artwork presented to the readers are excerpts of paintings while a thumbprint above is the whole painting, which due to its small size is almost impossible to study the details or to see what the whole piece actually looks like on a fuller scale. To further compound the issue most of the time the author suggests a notable feature to look at in the work but that is the one part that has been cut out from the excerpt and is much too hard to view in the miniature or in the case of Tamayo's Animals the cropping basically removed the subject's vitality.

At other times the author seems not to be able to see the details in the pieces he chose such as View of Château of Rosny where he mentioned the two deer but the reader can clearly see the third, which is a fawn standing from the underbrush. Furthermore the author definitely need to go back over with a fact check since he states the komodo dragon grows up to 100 feet in length.

Another point of contention for me is that although there were definitely some beautiful pieces included there wasn't quite a lot of diversity. Take for instance the last section of the book that focuses on fantastical creatures. Edward makes a point to list this wide range of creatures well-known to many people but when you flip through the pieces there is very small diversity of the subject while in other cases like the dragon he just uses the same theme over and over again but by various artists. What is the point when you know there are quite other wonderful works out there that have been overlooked.

And my last point of strife with this guy is his high snobbery opinions in art blurbs where I would rather just learn about the piece itself. He mocks anthropomorphism in animals and lectures the reader about how animals don't feel even though he does acknowledge they may have similar responses. He also savors the artwork of predator versus prey but bemoans the fact that these pieces are becoming a lot less since of the "squeamishness of city folk" and a somewhat oh by the way thought that it was also since many animals are in decline.

All together the only reason to get this book would be the artwork and even at that I wouldn't waste my money but rather check it out for a one-time glance through.

[Leah Markum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zoo was a happy accident at the library, harbored between art books I was scanning for good tutorials. This art book though is short in height and stout in with, and a condensed animal art museum. Close to half of the pieces come from European Christian art through the ages and the other half are modern. Occasionally Chinese and Muslim creations appear. In addition, sculptures are also rare and one of my main complaints--I'm sure there's a lot of neat three dimensional animal art out there, namely in classical times. Still, it's fun to read the chapter introductions, the piece descriptions, and study the visuals. Chapters zoom from one human-animal dynamic to the next: the jungle, entertainment, aquatics, mythical beasts, the geographic poles, Noah's arc, farms, insects, and many more. Some of the insect pieces were incredible, probably in part because they included plants and were more realistic--I'm not keen on the blocky forms that have been popular historically. Overall this was a pleasant find.