The concept of anthropomorphism and the image of animals in art

Throughout human history, human and animal beings have been in constant interaction. In terms of representing these interactions, the image of animals has taken place in various disciplines of art from the early ages to the present day. Animals have played an important role in the transmission of the belief, culture, tradition, folklore, myth and religious descriptions of the first civilizations in history. With the formation of animal representations, intercultural interactions, the reflections of the next civilizations that came after them on the art descriptions were seen. While the animals represented in the works of art sometimes turn into symbolic meanings, they sometimes turn into a moral guiding element. The animal image, which builds meaning through representation, has played an important role in reflecting human values and emotions. In this sense, the concept of anthropomorphism attributes human qualities to animals and positions them in a different way in terms of representation. The formal and physical abstractions of the concept of anthropomorphism have allowed the formation of concepts such as hybridity, irony and satire. It has brought with it various anthropomorphic animal representations, which reflect the changing socio-political, geographical, tradition or religious elements in the historical process to the art practices of the period. In this study, the relationship between art and animal imagery and these relationships were investigated through anthropomorphic tendencies and the representations of animal images in works of art were tried to be analyzed.