The Best and Worst Cats in the History of Art; Proof of Secret Society?

I recently visited Paris, where I ate lots of Nutella and, even more importantly, saw what I believe to be both the best and worst cat representations in the History of Art. (Or, the History of Art That I Have Seen. But let's not quibble.)

Veronese's sumptuous Wedding at Cana at the Louvre (which puts up a great fight across the room from that smug attention hog Mona Lisa), one of my all-time favorite pictures, features such a realistic cat that I can't help but tag Veronese as a cat lover. That cat is playing with that urn just like a cat would!

Meanwhile over at the Musee D'Orsay, Henri Rousseau's Madame M. poses with that hideous freak in the lower right. Forget Madame M's enormous hands and displaced shoulders -- what about that freaky kitty? And yet, as with all things Rousseau, it is an appealing and unforgettable freak, and points for the ball of string. He was playing with his ball of string, then looked up and saw a STARTLING TERROR!

Both master cats are in the lower right hand corner of their paintings; coincidence? Both are playing, attempting to destroy the string and urn (of the world? Of the Vatican?). The Madame extends all but her middle finger toward the cat. The water that has just been turned into wine at the feast is near the cat. Are these kittyphilic signs intentionally coded into the paintings by the painters? Could Veronese and Rousseau have been members of a secret pan-generational Opus Felis organization? Quick, call Dan Brown!!

Gauguin Woman At the Comfort Inn

I don't know if it really is a Comfort Inn. I think that's where she'd stay, though, if she was visiting St. Louis or something.

But did you notice that her room also has the famous convex mirror from Jan Van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait? That's pretty neat. I'm going to have to ask for one of those at my next hotel stay.

Maybe she has a business meeting coming up at Half-Nude Industries.

Maurice Denis, "Easter Mystery", 1891

I don't know my Bible very well, it seems, since I leapt from Easter to Easter egg hunt, as if that's really what Easter is: an excuse to hide eggs from children.

So of course Maurice Denis painted a disembodied hand taunting white-robed egg seekers with the missing egg. Of course he did.

Except that apparently that's the hand of God, and he's presenting the Eucharist, and I don't think we're supposed to think he's taunting anyone with it.

This is what happens when dopey unbelievers interpret religious art. The mystery and wonder of the Resurrection morphs into a bitter suburban American nightmare of fed-up soccer parents dressing their children in robes, hiding in trees, and wagging eggs in the air. April is the cruelest month in middle class mainstream America, after all.

Of course, my picture cuts off the tomb and the women on their knees at its door; hey, I thought they were searching the grass for their eggs.

But the Easter/egg connection is quite old, it seems, old enough that Mary Magdalene is said to have presented the Emperor of Rome with a red egg to inform him of the Resurrection and the bloodshed of Christ, etc. So for real, Denis might've painted an egg here, and I might be more informed than I thought.

I quite love Denis and his gently gothic-mystery forest scenes, with their robed women fleeing or striding or moseying around. He is Emily Bronte crossed with M. Night Shyamalan.

But this truly is the Worst. Hand of God. Ever. Michaelangelo, he ain't.

Sunday Afternoon on the Island of...holy crap, that's a lot of dots

I was in Chicago this past weekend, so I got took a good long gander at Georges Seurat's masterpiece. There sure are a lot of dots on that thing. It's so carefully built -- imagine if we really were characters in this painting, and we had to stand at right angles at all times. Unless we were a dog or a monkey.

I don't know about you, but I too like to take my monkey out for walks in the park, especially when I'm wearing my enormous bustle.

You never really know a painting until you see it in person (well, that's not true. For some, like Lichtensteins, I don't think it matters that much. But let's pretend this is true), and this one has a fabulous surprise in its painted purply border. The museum placard says Seurat added the border to help the eye make the transition to his custom-designed white frame, which they've replicated. (They being the Art Institute of Chicago.)

You almost never see that border in reproductions of the painting, which seems like a refutation of Seurat's intentions. I would imagine he'd like it there to lead the eye out to the white of the page of an art book, as well.

And so our eyes go unled, dazzled by orderly dots and skittering out to a chaotic 360 degree world.

I took a painting class once where we were forced to complete a pointillist painting, and boy did everyone hate doing it. It is profoundly unsatisfying. It feels like an obsessive compulsive exercise designed to force you to exert control over your own animal impulses and desires.

No wonder Seurat dropped dead at 31; he must've been exhausted.

Portraits of the Reverand Ebenezer Devotion and his wife Martha, Boston Museum of Fine Arts

"Ebenezer Devotion" is one of the finest and most quintessentially early-American names I've ever heard.

This folk art portrait perfectly captures what I think Americans think of themselves at their best. This is the upstanding yet staid, cartoonish yet dignified, goofy yet approachable American male with the outstanding name.

Martha's pretty cool, too, but she would've benefited from a Puritan supername like "Hebzibah".