EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

Artists are Animals

“Artists are animals” may seem like a derogatory statement but artists are animals and both art and intelligence are products of nature. We are not separate. We all play our part in the cosmos, all created by similar processes: rats, mice, cats, lions, birds, humans etc. etc. Artists, mystics all, seem intent to acknowledge this as a basic truth (long before Charles Darwin, I should add) though only for those who will understand. For viewers unaware of what Aldous Huxley called the Perennial Philosophy the presence of the artist as a dog, say, would be misunderstood so, to them, the dog looks like a dog. For others who understand, the dog resembles the artist. Take a look at how a fifteenth-century artist, Martin Schongauer, an artist whom Dürer worshipped, conveyed this message in a small engraving of St. George and the Dragon (above). “Artists as animals” is an important but unknown theme in art running, perhaps, throughout its history from the cave-painters onwards. It is a fact from the Middle Ages to the present day but might probably have been present, if we looked further afield, from Day One.