DON'T MATISSE THE CAT; IT'D RATHER BE CHASING RODINS

Date: Saturday, December 31, 2005

Cats are beautiful just being themselves, but for anyone who would enjoy seeing them enhanced with a subtle palette of color and design, I refer you to a marvelous book by author Burton Silver and photographer Heather Busch, Why Paint Cats: The Ethics of Feline Aesthetics.

Several of the images from the book are at whypaintcats .com online complete with reader comments.

Perhaps you are thinking, "This has got to be a spoof!" And yes, that possibility must certainly be considered. After all, the phrase "painted cat picture" is syntactically ambiguous. It could mean "picture of a painted cat" or "cat picture that has been painted." As it is undoubtedly easier to carry out the second operation, and likely more satisfactory to the cat, the principle of ontological parsimony known as Occam's razor suggests that the latter method is at least predominant. But the authors are very careful never to admit to spoofing and I certainly cannot state, categorically, that they never, actually, painted a cat and then took its picture.

That the authors credit the invention of the "electrostatic airbrush" for the growing popularity of cat painting is also a clue. I took the book back to our photo department and while one of our imagers was leafing through the book, another clicked on a sweet picture of a dog that happened to be on the computer screen, and painted the dog purple and lavender with Photoshop.

It took him about 30 seconds, and maybe another 15 to touch up the dog's face with dramatic scarlet swooshes.

Our imaging department, not at all coincidentally, would like you to know that using airbrushes and other such tools, electrostatic or not, is an absolute no-no on news photos.

In any case, whatever the status of the book's photos, the text that accompanies them is a hilarious sendup of the pretentious hooey that passes for art criticism in some exhibition catalogs.

Even the copyright notices are delicious. "No cats have been harmed during the making of this book. All artists or facilitators included in the book, with the exception of the two artists on pages 41 & 42, are, or have been members of Artists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals," says one.

"Why Paint Cats is a registered international experiment in morphic resonance and is designed to test the hypothesis of formative causation," says another, and gives the International Experiment number.

Each painted cat picture is accompanied by the cat's name and breed, details of the painting, such as what kind of dye was used, a picture of the artist and an essay explicating the artist's aesthetic philosophy. You know what museum catalogs are like.

So Zeno Baron, who according to the book completed a $10,000 commission called Bone Voyage portraying Tom Yates' cat Bruno as a skeleton, practices Post-Munchausenism. Yates praises Baron's "valuable razor-sharp insights into eco-feline dysfunction," and says his neighbors are upset "with the cat painted as death" because "we don't want to admit that our beloved cats are killers."

In the Foreword, a "cynical old art critic" who claims to have been involved in the arts for "more than 50 years" but whose name is unknown to Google in that capacity, describes encountering Cymbeline, whose "lithe body was covered with a mosaic of large turquoise-tinged diamonds that spread out and enveloped her like the translucent stained-glass shapes of a butterfly's wings. . . The design was profoundly organic, at once the pattern of a turtle, giraffe and beetle made alive in fur."

Why yes, turquoise fur-covered turtles. Profoundly organic, to be sure.

The caption pointed out that an earlier work by the same artist "was shown at the inaugural International Food Fair 2000 in Sharjah as part of Italy's New Art for the New Millennium exhibit. It was awarded the H.B. Saeed Mohammad Al Paganbani Prize for Decorated Food in the mistaken belief that Italians eat cats."

Of a painting of a cat covered in peacock feathers, painted by Guiseppe Maria Crespi and now in a museum in Pisa, the Introduction says, "The cat's sad demeanor has often been interpreted as a prophetic warning against genetic modification."

A big worry circa 1714.

Are you giggling yet? If not, consider Robb, a Siamese painted tartan by Classical Fabricationist Miriam McKee. "Robb was painted while asleep," the caption says, "and took 30 half-hour sessions to complete." Or another tartan Siamese, pictured with her similarly clad owner, a Scottish publican who claims in a footnote that the cost of the painting, £5,000, "was more than repaid in bets that he took with hapless drinkers who were willing to wager that there was no such thing as a tartan cat and that he didn't have one upstairs."

It's the end of the year, and a time for lighthearted revelry. Happy New Year, and don't paint any cats.