Existing comment:
Dog Barking at the Moon
1942
oil on canvas
Private collection
Dog Barking at the Moon may have been inspired by two different sources. Its subject recalls Joan Miró's Dog Howling at the Moon (1926), which Tamayo would have seen at the Museum of Living Art, one of the leading modern art venues in New York between 1927 and 1942. The dog's posture also resembles pre-Columbian
sculptures that Tamayo increasingly turned to for inspiration in the 1940s. Critics at the time often linked Tamayo's indigenous ancestry to his chosen subjects, with some suggesting that his art sprang from an innate inner source, rather than the artist's intentional aesthetic choices. For example, in 1943 a reviewer for Art News described the dog seen here as "a member of that breed which Tamayo's pre-Columbian ancestors once fattened as a table delicacy. |