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What is anthropomorphic art?
Anthropomorphic artwork has an ancient pedigree in virtually every culture. Ancient myths and artwork depict many talking animals and half human creatures such as the ancient Egyptian gods, the Greek centaurs, the various animal spirits of Native American myth, the dog-headed St. Christopher of the Eastern orthodox church, and many others. "Anthropomorphic" basically refers to any non human creature or object endowed with human like characteristics. While inanimate objects endowed with speech are possible, they are rare. The vast majority of anthropomorphic art and literature focuses on large charismatic animals such as big cats, canines, deer, etc. These are animals that people associate with a specific trait, such as strength, bravery, purity, hard work, etc. Because of the deep cultural associations built up around various animals, they are often used in art, literature, and advertising to quickly convey information. Cartoons and advertising are often prime modern examples of this because they need to convey a lot of information in a very short amount of time. While not everyone looking at a piece may be aware of all the lore related to an animal, they can usually name an attribute that animal is known for and it will be fairly consistent across a culture. Different cultures have different associations with different animals but globalization is resulting in the Western cultural associations dominating in many cases. However, if a creature is not already well represented in Western art and literature, contact with another culture may result in the other culture's associations being absorbed into western culture. For example, many Native American myths were absorbed into the European lore because they had no experience with creatures such as the coyote. If the other culture has even more extensive literature about a subject, it may also prevail against Western culture, or result in a fusion of the two cultures in pop culture. Foxes have a rich history in both European and Asian folklore as tricksters but in pop culture, you are equally likely to encounter both versions.
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