ABSTRACT
Depictions of sharks have differed so sharply between Eastern and Western art that we may be forgiven for doubting whether the twain, to use Rudyard Kipling’s words, would ever meet. The Western tradition, comprised of artists on both sides of the Atlantic, is overwhelmingly sensational, exaggerating the horror, the size, and the toothy jaws of sharks, making them monsters from our nightmares rather than rendering them in realistic terms. In Asian and Pacific art, however, sharks have been presented in more accurate and commonplace terms, without spectacle. The reasons for this divergence in traditions are several, deriving first from familiarity, or lack thereof. For Pacific islanders, sharks have always been part of the given, more plentiful than wolves were for rural Europeans or bears for American settlers. Polynesians swam with sharks and frequently counted them among their gods, and even believed them to be inhabited by the spirits of their ancestors. Shark teeth and sharkskin were incorporated into everyday artefacts. But for both Europeans and North Americans, sharks remained rarely seen, poorly understood, and inaccurately depicted until late in the eighteenth century. The slave trade, specifically the hyperbolic lore surrounding it, and the chronicles of Captain Cook’s voyages to the Pacific, were to have a lasting effect on the representations of sharks in the visual arts. This chapter considers the visual representations of sharks in painting, sculpture and a wide variety of cultural artefacts to demonstrate the important contribution that sharks have made to human civilisation.
