Canonical Figures and the Recognition of Animals in Life and Art

Abstract

Is there a particular perceptual modality, i.e., a way of seeing rock art figures (zoomorphs and anthropomorphs) which involves simple recognition and is distinguishable from the recognition of these same figures in other contexts?Such a modality would be prioritized by evolution and would depend on elements of a figure and/or of perception which make preliminary identification easy and rapid, for example, typical or dominant views, salient features, pars pro toto processes, visual "invariants" (Gibson 1979), "typical contours" (Deregowski 1984(Deregowski , 1995)).This paper discusses some of the literature on the subject and offers its own perspective on what we term canonicals in life and in art.

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