Feline Inspiration

Cats. Like Marmite, Kanye West and reality TV they tend to polarise opinions. To detractors they're cold, calculating, sinister beings who use humans for food and attention. To cat lovers, the very traits that irk the haters – their cool countenance, air of superiority and unwillingness to be stroked if not in the mood – are all signs of character, which opposes the dogged subservience of their canine rivals (to the cat lover, dogs are just a little too...eager to please).

Paul Klee, Cat and Bird, 1928
Oil and ink on gessoed canvas, mounted on wood, 38.1 x 53.2 cm
Museum of Modern Art, New York

And perhaps this is why so many artists seem to be in league with moggies (especially 20th Century artists for some reason). You only need type in artists and their cats into Google and you'll be greeted by a slew of pictures of the most influential artists of the last century positively cooing over their cats - Picasso, Klee, Dali, Matisse...the list goes on. Perhaps these visionaries found a spiritual alignment with the feline aloofness, which mirrored their artistic detachment from the world; or perhaps cats represent an air of refinement so necessary to the development of some of the defining art movements of the 20th century. If Picasso, for instance, had looked to a dog for approval of one of his paintings, he'd have been greeted with a tail-wag at the earliest instance and perhaps stopped there... a cat on the other hand would turn its nose up at even the most incredible, awe-inspiring, mind-blowing painting, inspiring the artist to strive further, bigger, better, and before he and the world knew it, the inspiration for both the cubist and modern art movement Les Demoiselles d'Avignon was created... all because of the scorn of his pet cat (although this may not be proved, it certainly can't be disproved, which is good enough for me).

Left: Picasso’s nonplussed cat averts his gaze from the camera
Right: Could Picasso’s masterpiece and disputed inspiration for the Cubist and Modern Art movements itself have been inspired by a cat?
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.
Oil on Canvas (244 x 234 cm).
Museum of Modern Art, New York

And then of course there's the Egyptians. Can you imagine the Pharaohs (and their thousands of slaves of course) going to all the effort of hauling tonne upon tonne of rock on top of each other (without a single crane in sight), and then carving said rock with their bare hands, to create a stone monument of a woman's head perched atop the body of a bugle or a sausage dog (' just doesn't work, does it?) And that's not to mention the scores of statues, carvings and engravings dedicated to them. Cats back then weren't just revered, they were worshipped.

Cat with Kittens (detail).
Reportedly from Saqqara, Egypt. Late Period to Ptolemaic Period, Dynasty 26 or later, circa 664–30 B.C.E.
Bronze, solid-cast and wood, 6.1 x 8.8 x 5 cm.
Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.406E

For proof of the Egyptians’ love for cats the Brooklyn Museum has a permanent exhibition of carvings and statues called Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt; cat lovers in the area can show their allegiance by stopping by. For all you non-Brooklynites, you can side with fellow feline fans by picking up a copy of any of the following ebooks: Picasso; Klee; Klimt; Dali; Bonnard.

Vollard y el desbordamiento de Picasso

Ambroise Vollard, considerado el principal marchante de arte contemporáneo de su generación, fue uno de esos hombres que se hacen a sí mismos. Llegó a París en 1887 sin apenas contactos ni referencias, pero su habilidad para los negocios y su visión artística le permitieron convertirse en el audaz impulsor de grandes artistas como Cézanne, Gauguin, Degas, van Gogh, Renoir, Bonnard, Vuillard y Picasso, que fueron subestimados en sus inicios.

Entre las arriesgadas operaciones que lo llevaron a ser quien fue, Vollard obsequió algunos cuadros a Pablo Picasso a cambio de una extensa colección de grabados que se conocen como la «Suite Vollard». Pocos son los museos que se pueden enorgullecer de poseer una serie completa de estos grabados. Por ello, el British Museum ha organizado la exposición «Picasso Prints. The Vollard Suite» para presentar al público los 100 grabados que ha conseguido reunir gracias a la generosa donación de la Hamish Parker Charitable Trust.*

Este «diario visual», de líneas sencillas y limpias y con un marcado estilo neoclásico, expresa los pensamientos, las ideas y las preocupaciones del que bien podría ser el artista más importante del siglo XX en la época en la que fueron realizados, entre 1930 y 1937. Con la guerra civil española como trasfondo, Picasso vivía en el castillo Boisgeloup, a las afueras de París, donde se dedicaba a realizar esculturas y a «hacer grandes cosas» junto a su musa y amante, la joven Marie-Thérèse Walter. Los grabados para Vollard reflejan la mitología personal del artista, que utiliza al minotauro, al toro-ganadero, como reflejo de sí mismo, de las emociones descontroladas y de la violencia y brutalidad que mueven el mundo.

La serie concluye con tres grabados del editor, sobre quien Picasso afirmó que «era un hombre tan vanidoso como una mujer», ya que «ni siquiera la mujer más bella del mundo había sido retratada con tanta asiduidad». En cualquier caso, este negocio no fue especialmente provechoso para Vollard, ya que falleció en un accidente de coche antes de que se realizaran todas las impresiones que había previsto.


Retrato de hombre con barba, Ambroise Vollard, 1937.
Grabado, placa 100 de la «Suite Vollard».
The British Museum, Londres.