Banksy's artwork of large cat (lion?) removed by contractors (video). Public boo!

I recently discussed this Banksy artwork on another site. It is of a large cat and as you can see there's a pom-pom end to the tail which indicates to me that is meant to be a lion. We know that Banksy is an activist, left-wing, concerned, and sensitive about wildlife and equality et cetera. He's quite a campaigner in a way through his artwork. This stencilled artwork was in Cricklewood which is North London, UK.

The black cat was stencilled onto an old advertising hoarding that hadn't been used for a long time by the look of it. The owners of the hoarding apparently employ contractors to remove the artwork because they feared that it would be stolen by an individual (as they often are) and that would result in the hoarding collapsing and harming somebody. That is their reason but I suspect the reason is to steal the artwork!! 😱😃 

The video shows it being removed. And the public are booing as it happened because they like the artwork. It elevates the mood of the place where they live. It makes them feel good. Unfortunately, as mentioned, his artwork almost always gets stolen because it is highly valuable. And I'm talking in the hundreds of thousands of pounds sometimes or at least £10,000, something like that.

To complete the story, I created an Infographic which explains, as I understand it, how he creates is very special artwork. I am speculating in the Infographic but is quite interesting because he's been doing this for a very long time and nobody knows what he looks like. 😎 

But the biggest point to make here is that he works as a team. He needs a team of individuals to use a cherry picker or scaffolding to get to high places. He does like to paint his artwork at high places, well off the ground. Perhaps he does this to protect the artwork and perhaps to make it more visible. It's quite unusual as we see in the video for his artwork to be at ground level. 

He works at night and in the early days apparently he worked with a kind of hoarding around the artwork so people - I guess - thought he was a local government contractor doing some maintenance work or something like that. That helped to disguise him. 

And on another occasion he was seen wearing a mask on a cherry picker so he does take remaining anonymous very seriously because it's part of his art. And I believe that the stealing of his artwork is also part of his art because it allows the common man, to participate in generating some income. It is an act of equality, a gift to Londoners if you like.

Speculating on how Banksy works by Michael Broad

----------

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins. Also: sources for news articles are carefully selected but the news is often not independently verified. Also, I rely on scientific studies but they are not 100% reliable.

Sleeping Cat by Mori Kansai

This is an artwork by a Japanese artist who lived between 1814 and 1894. Not a lot is written about him on the Internet but I picked up his painting of a sleeping cat on Twitter. He is said to be "a distinguished representative of the Maruyama school" and he presided over the activities of the Joun-sha Kyoto painting circle according to the Saru Gallery. He used a variety of techniques including ink painting and he painted directly rather than sketching beforehand. His name is written as follows in Japanese: 寛斎 森.

Sleeping Cat by Mori Kansai.

He studied Nanga style painting. This was a school of Japanese painting which was very popular in the late Edo period. It was popular with the literati artists i.e. the well-educated people who were interested in literature. They admired traditional Chinese culture. The paintings were made in monochrome black ink. Nanga painting is also referred to as "literati painting" or "Southern painting". The painting on this page appears not to be in this style. I suspect that the colours were far more vibrant when it was created. It is distinctly faded. The Nanga style of painting always depicted traditional Chinese subjects. 

I'd like to comment on the painting of the cat on this page by Mori Kansai. It is notable that this cat is obese. That is not a criticism of the painting because I am sure that he painted it literally. 

Perhaps he lived with cats for a cat. The painting looks faded but you can tell that this is a tricolour or tortoiseshell-and-white cat which is very popular in Japan. There is a hint of the Van marking on the forehead. The cat's tail is also coloured and not white as is most of the body of the cat.

This is a standard calico cat in Japan of that time but he or she is obese! I'm going to speculate wildly and say that this is a cat that lived with the artist. He loved his cat and gave her treats resulting in obesity. This is a female cat because all tortoiseshells and variants on the tortoiseshell coat are nearly always females. If they are male, they are sterile.

One last point: this cat is not genuinely sleeping but snoozing. The body position indicates that. It is too alert to be genuinely sleeping. He should have titled it 'Cat Snoozing'. It doesn't sound as good though.

Painting Cats

Portrait of a Siamese Cat by Denise Laurent

How many of us have commissioned an artist to paint their cat? Not many I suspect. But how many would like to do it?

I think that a well crafted painting of a cat companion can go well beyond a photograph in terms of conveying the character of our cat but it has to be very good to do that.

A painting or drawing of a cat that can be called "art" should accurately capture both the appearance of the cat and his or her character and perhaps a bit more. It may portray something of the relationship between cat and human and it might portray what the artist's client feels about their cat. These are very subtle and elusive concepts but I believe that they can be achieved in pantings of the highest quality.

I would like to present an artist who lives in London, England who takes commissions for paintings of animal companions. Her name is Denise Laurent.

She works in oils or acrylics and can work from photographs. I would guess that the best combination for an artist who paints animals is to paint from life plus have some photos to work from as cats are only still when curled up dozing or asleep! As Denise mentions on her website, the cat is a still life in motion.

If the client likes the idea, Denise will involve the client in the making of the painting as it progresses. I think that this is smart and sensible as it allows her to receive information in respect of the person's thoughts and feelings about their cat and about the cat's character and behavior and whether this information is on the canvas. This all helps to get it right for the client and to capture the essence of the individual cat.

You can see a page on cats in paintings by other artists on this page.

Dali Atomicus Incorporated Three Flying Cats

Dali Atomicus Incorporated Three Flying Cats

This very famous photograph incorporates three flying cats and is by the very well know photographer Philippe Halsman (2 May 1906 Riga, Latvia - 25 June 1979 New York City). He is described as a portrait photographer by the Wikipedia author. As I remember he also took dramatic fashion photographs. He was a fine technician, setting up his photographs meticulously.

Now cats interest me! This is the main website: Pictures of Cats.org. I tend to get a bit upset when I see cats thrown through the air for the sake of "art", albeit (for me) very good art indeed. I like Salvador Dali's work and the work of Mr Halsman but I don't like seeing three flying cats, at a considerable height, especially when it took 28 takes to get things right. This photograph was the result of a collaboration between these two artists that lasted many years, I understand.

Please note that the large heading picture is an unretouched photo. The final version is the smaller picture to the right of this page.

You can see the person (Halsman's wife, I believe) holding the chair on the left and the strings holding up the easel and painting, for example. The concept was to explore idea of suspension. Halsman also became well known for jumping pictures, another form of suspension. He produced a book of 178 photographs of celebrities jumping. He felt (correctly) that in jumping a person's mask is thrown away as he or she is concentrating on jumping successfully for the camera.

Back to those cats! They were thrown with the water. Remember this was well before CGI (computer graphic images). It was all manual and natural. It looks to me as if the top cat was in a bucket of water and thrown with the water, while the other two were thrown by someone else from a dry start! Cats have wonderful self-righting abilities as we know but this looks a bit brutal to me. I would expect the cats to have been alright, however.

The water takes an interesting route and the picture in the easel was retouched in.



Dali Atomicus Incorporated Three Flying Cats to Home Page

Dali Atomicus Incorporated Three Flying Cats - the photos are in the public domain in the EU and America and other countries because copyright was not renewed. The top picture was downloaded from Wikimedia - user: Trialsanderrors and the lower final finished version is from Flickr (presume also copyright free) by monkeyc.net.

Chartreux on a Stamp

Chartreux on a Stamp - a stamp from Azerbaijan.

Well, I am surprised and pleased to see this. OK, it was 1995 but it is very rare to have purebred cats on the stamps of a country. The cat depicted, the Chartreux, is one of the grey cat breeds. It is also a breed that is meant to look as it did some 400 years ago. The breeders are sworn to maintain the naturalness of the cat.

Azerbaijan is a neighbor of Georgia and is close to Russia. It is a sort of a satellite of Russia. Well, that is the way I see it. It is a small country. Russia does have quite a well developed cat fancy (cat breeders and cat shows etc.) and it may be that this is a spin off from the USSR years when Azerbaijan was a part of the Soviet Union. Here is where it is:

The Chartreux is a rare cat. As at 2005, 150m (manat) (the value) stamps were worth 1/30th of a dollar. So postage was incredibly cheap but of course earning would have been very low by USA standards.



Chartreux on a Stamp to Home Page

Chartreux on a Stamp -- Photo of Stamp: This is not copyrighted and the user Butko at Wikimedia uploaded the photo.

Boy with Cats by Francisco de Goya

Boy with Cats by Francisco de Goya - This is my title. The subject was the son of the Count and Countess of Altimara. His name was Don Manuel Osorio de Zuniga. The boy was about the same age as Goya's son Xavier. The painting was commissioned by the Bank of Spain.

We can see that he has a pet magpie on a string, which was no doubt considered acceptable in Spain at that time. In Asia it is still very common (not a magpie on a string but birds caged etc.!). There are also some caged birds. And, yes, of course cats, what else. This is another post in the series on cats in paintings. How many cats can you see and what type? And my heavens they are well behaved. Maybe they (the magpie and cats) grew up together and were somewhat socialized? This painting of a boy with cats was painted in 1784.

Here is a video on Francisco de Goya showing some of his work. Cats were not a central part of his life!





Boy with Cats by Francisco de Goya to Home Page

Cat by Francisco Domingo Marqués

Cat by Francisco Domingo Marqués. I do not know when it was painted and the answer is not available to me despite a decent search. The artist was Spanish and he lived 1842-1920. Once again this is the era of the beginning of the cat fancy in England in the mid late 1800s.

The cat is a tabby and white, a very commonly seen type of cat (not a breed of cat) on the continent in Europe and in warmer climates. This is a young cat and to me she is female. The artist did not specialise in animals but painted them occasionally. I have a feeling that he lived with one or two and painted them. Here is a video showing the kind of subject matter that he painted:

This is another post in the series of Cats in Paintings, which contains a list of all the posts so far.



Cat by Francisco Domingo Marqués to Home Page

The Cat's Paw

The Cat's Paw by Edwin Landseer is a fascinating painting. What the devil is going on and why? Edwin Landseer was a very well know (in his lifetime) English artist of great talent who specialised in paintings and sculptures of animals, particularly stags, horses and dogs. Maybe he didn't like cats! Judging by the painting above it is possible.

In the painting there are 6 cats (are there more? - not sure). Four are looking at the monkey who is holding a tabby and white cat. One, a black and white cat (see the white left hind leg) is on the monkey's back. This cat is barely seen in this image. The monkey is deliberately holding the paw of the cat on a hot stove while protecting his own foot by turning it at an angle. The monkey looks like he is enjoying it. The cat is in agony, of course.

I cannot find information about Landseer's motivation for painting this work of art, The Cat's Paw. It was painted in 1824 and it is an oil on panel. Landseer died in 1873 and was declared insane in 1872 at the request of his family having suffered for a long time from depression and melancholy (this doesn't mean that he was insane of course). At the time of making the painting he was 22 years old.

My rather rash and speculative guess is that Mr Landseer was a hunting and fishing man. He liked dogs, stags and horses, as stated. Such a person is more a pack animal and pack animals are less likely to be cat lovers. He may have disliked cats and this was one way of showing it. I think he wants to be the monkey!



The Cats Paw to Cats in Paintings

Children Playing with a Cat

Mary Cassatt's painting entitled, "Children Playing with a Cat" 1908.

This is a post in the series of Cats in Paintings. There are lots of cats in paintings as can be imaged (see Cats in Paintings). Cats are very popular subjects. I am very impressed by Mary Cassatt having just read her biography. She was an American lady born into a well-to-do family but was determined to follow her chosen career of an artist and make a living out of it. Her father objected but helped a bit financially (only a little bit mind you). She more or less made it on her own and against the odds as women at the time she was alive (1845- 1926) were frankly treated as second class citizens. They were "in the shadow of the man". Women still struggle get out of that shadow today.

Mary Cassat was born in Allegheny City (Pittsburg now), Pennsylvania but spent much of her working (painting) life in France. It was the time when Paris, France was the center of the Impressionist movement and it seems that she was inspired and motivated by the place and the people. She befriended some well known artists such as Edgar Degas and exhibited with the Impressionists.

At the time Children Playing with a Cat was created Mary Cassatt was concentrating entirely on mother and child subjects. It was a time when her was had a greater element of sentimentality about it. This was probably disliked by some of her Impressionist friends from whom she had gained inspiration and advice. At the time she was 63 years of age and had been awarded the Légion d'honneur in 1904 by the State.

Looking at the picture brings to my mind how she achieved it. You know what they say about working with animals and children. I will presume that she worked from life and not a photograph, although photography was very much around at the time. Perhaps it was achieved in a series of shortish sittings.

Mary Cassatt's brother was better known than her during her life. He was Alexander J. Cassatt (1839 – 1906) the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad from 1899 to 1906. Although Mary Cassatt struggled to achieve recognition in her lifetime, particularly in the USA, her paintings are now very valuable, one being sold for $2.87m (2005)


Sara holding a cat by Mary Cassatt - another sentimental and charming painting by this artist dated 1908 as well.

As to the cat in the painting it is almost certainly a very typical tabby and white. A straight forward moggie. I expect that is was painted in France, Paris, where she lived.



Children Playing with a Cat to Cats in Paintings

Children Playing with a Cat - Top Photo/painting: This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. The image is part of the Wikimedia library and it was uploaded by Cobalty.

Children Playing with a Cat - Lower picture is of the artist in a self portrait (cropped) and from the Wikimedia library (uploaded by user Civvi) and now in the public domain.

Bottom picture same as for the others uploaded into Wikimedia by Cobalty.

Angora Kitten

Angora kitten by Arthur Heyer. See copyright below.

The kitten in the painting is described by the artist as a "Junge Angorakatze" (Young Angora cat). This is a Persian cat, I am sure. The artist is well known. He was a German-Hungarian painter who lived from 1872 to 1931. This nicely covers the beginning of the cat fancy in England. Arthur Heyer specialized in feline and canine subjects. He seemed to like Persian cats and I would not be surprised to hear if he lived with a companion Persian cat, possibly a white one!

He often painted scenes of cats and dogs together. His cats and kittens paintings are his most popular. It is interesting that he called this cat an Angora cat. At that time this was the terminology for a long haired cat. Both the Turkish Angora and Persian (traditional appearance by modern standards) were around at the time of Arthur Heyer. The use of the term "Angora cat" is confusing and I am still not completely clear on how the term was used in the early years of the cat fancy. See Angora cat. I think Heyer also lived with a bulldog as bulldogs and white Persians feature a lot in his work. His work is still very popular and sold widely on the internet.



Angora Kitten to Persian Cat Transformation (Traditional to Modern apperance)

Angora Kitten - Photo of painting: this is in the public domain as copyright has expired. It is from the Wikimedia Commons library and the person who uploaded it was user Mazbln.

Cheshire cat art

Cheshire cat art is based on Lewis Carroll's fictional character in his book, "Alice in Wonderland". In the book the cat talked to Alice and sometimes baffled her with his philosophy. The Cheshire cat was is known for his grin, which occurred when he gradually disappeared. Apparently Lewis Carroll might have been thinking of a British Shorthair cat when he thought up the character as it is this breed of cat that is was on Cheshire Cheese packaging at the time. Cheshire is in the North of England. Cheshire cat is not a breed of cat.


British Shorthair cat copyright Helmi Flick - Lewis Carroll based his character the Cheshire cat on this cat breed, it is thought.


"Please, would you tell me," said Alice, a little timidly, ... "why your cat grins like that?""It's a Cheshire cat," said the Duchess, "and that's why."


This cat is made for some cat art and there is plenty about at deviantART, where the following examples can be seen and lots more:


Cheshire Cat by ~OptimalProtocol on deviantART

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Cheshire cat art - image copyright ~Geyzerrr - this is published here under a permitted download from deviantART. The image has been reduced in size (dimensions) and file size (quality) to accommodate easy loading of this web page.

It is a picture for the artist's project "My Crazy Wonderland". The Cheshire cat represents a form of madness (although I am not sure that was the intention of Lewis Carroll - does someone know?). In the book the cat declares (jokingly it seems) that he is mad because he does things differently to a dog. Perhaps this is a comment on the world meaning that if you are different people treat you as mad.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Cheshire cat art - image by ~Akira-Wishmaker

I like this image as it captures the slightly "mad" behavior of the cat and it is very colorful and for me artwork that demonstrates talent.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Cheshire cat image is by ~Milezy The artist lives in the Philippines and is female. I suspect a lot of the artists are women.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


My Cheshire Cat Tattoo by ~Body-Art on deviantART
I think it's fun to see the Cheshire cat turned into body art.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Another theory for the inspiration for Lewis Carroll's Cheshire cat is that the Cheshire cheese in the area was cut into the shape of a cat that was grinning. The tail was cut and eaten first leaving the grinning head. This squares up with the book's description.

There are many stories on the inspiration for the Cheshire cat. Another theory is that the cats in Cheshire were content and therefore grinned as they had a lot of milk available, Cheshire being a dairy farm area. Cheshire is south east of Liverpool and north west of Stoke on Trent.

Top RHS picture is a Wikimedia commons image now copyright free. Thank you Wikipedia.

Cheshire cat art to Egyptian cat Art

Anthropomorphic cat art

Just so we are all clear (including me) anthropomorphic cat art means art in which cats are portrayed as humans (i.e. a cat is given human characteristics and this is used for the basis for the creation of art).

And by far the best place (for me at least) to find this kind of art is the well known website, deviantART.

I spent about 40 minutes (there is so much it doesn't take long to find good stuff) trawling through the anthropomorphic cat art sections of deviantART and came up with these, which is a small selection. One factor in the selection is that some of the artists allow downloads and some allow hot links etc. It is these I am able to reproduce here:



The Cats Good Life by *asemo on deviantART

This artist created this around the fictional premise that cats were on two legs and in disrespecting the Gods they were made to walk on four legs.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Image © Leona Preston 2007

I actually like this image a lot for the reason that this cat/person seems to have life and character and for me there seems to be some pain . Maybe because the character portrayed is a 18th Century Midshipman of the Royal Navy. This was a hard life and a relatively short life by modern standards. The picture is of a 5" sculpture from different angles.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I'm O'Malley the Alley Cat by ~PoisonApple88 on deviantART

What is this about? I think it is inspired by the Disney cartoon film Aristocats.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Vermeer goes furry as the artist says - image is copyright ~ImmortalSilver

This is a take on the "Girl with a Pearl Earring" painting. There is a 2003 film by the same title starring Scarlett Johansson. The film is about the painting of the painting and this one above is Anthropomorphic cat art based on the painting!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You can see a bit of the Anthropomorphic cat art of Louis Wain as I have used one of his drawings to illustrate how a Siamese cat looked in 1987 (go to Siamese cat history). Louis Wain was known for his cartoon characters of cats.


Anthropomorphic cat art to Home page