Answer: Anthropomorphic imagery is taking animals or objects and giving them human shapes and/or qualities. Opinions will vary.
Anthropomorphism also referred to as personification is a well established literary device from ancient times. The story of “The Hawk and the Nightingale” in Hesiod’s Works and Days preceded Aesop’s fables by centuries.Collections of linked fables from India the Jataka Tales and Panchatantra also employ anthropomorphized animals to illustrate principles of life.
Two are anthropomorphic animals two are anthropomorphic objects and one is an anthropomorphic concept (if a god is a concept). I don’t object to the Anubis statue though it definitely isn’t as clearly a representation of anthropomorphism as the cat drawing.
Anthropomorphic statues in public places are to be found in most Muslim countries (Saddam Hussein’s are infamous) as well as art schools training sculptors and painters. In the Egyptian countryside it is fashionable to celebrate and advertise the returning of pilgrims from Mecca on the walls of their houses.
The word zoomorphism derives from the Greek ζωον (zōon) meaning “animal” and μορφη (morphē) meaning “shape” or “form”.In the context of art zoomorphism could describe art that imagines humans as non-human animals. It can also be defined as art that portrays one species of animal like another species of animal or art that uses animals as a visual motif sometimes referred to as …
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