Composite monster images have populated many a visual culture, from archaic Egypt to modern-day movie and video game franchises. As Angus McBride’s depiction of the Assyrian lamassu guarding figure for the Finding Out magazine (1966) demonstrates, we tend to treat them as products of human fancy, of “the free play of the mind” understood as “the recombination of what is known into what is new”, as Ursula Le Guin once put it. But as David Summers argues in his magnum opus Real Spaces (2003), how humans approach composite monster images may differ from one culture to another. Perhaps treated differently than in ancient Assyria, the monumental lamassu sculptures that once guarded Neo-Assyrian royal palaces nevertheless retain their pull on us today when they belong to the highlights of major museums. What is the nature of this pull? How does it survive across times and spaces? I tackle this question in my essay on David Summers and his vision of world art history.
