Saturday, April 14, 2012

Cat "Art"/"Human" Art






A "painting" produced by four cats using the iPad app, Paint for Cats. The results were so compelling, the shelter turned them into notecards and are selling them online for $5.99 a pack. The Los Angeles animal shelter is hoping a few crafty cats can sell their artwork. AP Photo/SPCALA.

More Information: http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=54736&int_modo=1[/url]
Copyright © artdaily.org

A "painting" produced by four cats using the iPad app, Paint for Cats. The results were so compelling, the shelter turned them into notecards and are selling them online for $5.99 a pack. The Los Angeles animal shelter is hoping a few crafty cats can sell their artwork. AP Photo/SPCALA.

More Information: http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=54736&int_modo=1[/url]
Copyright © artdaily.org


A "painting" produced by four cats using the iPad app, Paint for Cats. The results were so compelling, the shelter turned them into notecards and are selling them online for $5.99 a pack. The Los Angeles animal shelter is hoping a few crafty cats can sell their artwork. AP Photo/SPCALA.




LOS ANGELES (AP).- 

A Los Angeles animal shelter that lets its cats chase toys on top of iPads hope the digital art created by the movement will encourage donations of money and tablet computers. An Animal Planet crew visited the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Los Angeles for the April 14 episode of "Must Love Cats," where they documented how four cats used an app called Paint for Cats. The results were so compelling that the shelter turned them into notecards. The cards with drawings named "Study in Feather Toys" and "Movement in Catnip" are being sold online for $5.99 a pack. Shelter president Madeline Bernstein says the cats had so much fun, they put used iPads on their wish list so other cats can paint, too.

NOTE:  This story and the artistic results should come as no surprise to anyone who is tuned into cats, even in the slightest.  As I’ve written here before, my cat Claude works nightly creating what are clearly works of art using different types of paper and cards he ferrets out and places in deliberate patterns on the floor, creating hybrid painting/sculpture assemblages.  When he is in the throes of creation he vocalizes like an opera singer and his face reminds me of a combination of the painter played by Robert Newton in “Odd Man Out” and, just a little bit because he is so conventionally, but monumentally handsome, of Charlton Heston as Michelangelo in “The Agony and The Ecstasy.”  Considered from an aesthetic point of view, Claude is the Kurt Schwitters/Edward Kienholz of his era.  Knowing this and viewing his work is one of the greatest gifts I have ever received, one I can’t honestly believe I deserve.
Not all cats are artists, just as not all people are artists.  Some prefer other professional pursuits and recreational pastimes.  If I had to generalize about cats – about what all cats are and are like – I would say they all like sports (at least as spectators) and, particularly, the early summer All England Wimbledon tennis tournament.  In our home, Bud Collins’ departure from the broadcast coverage scene was viewed as an improvement (but not much of one) by humans and felines alike.  All one should ideally hear are the sounds of ball whacking and popping and umpire calls.  If a grunt/groan delete mechanism could be installed into television receivers, and on-air commentators could be exiled to some Devil's Island Of The Mind for their past bad acts, tennis-on-tv life would be Complete.





2 comments:

  1. I love this! What fun. I do think cats look at us askance, as if to say, Please. Give me a break.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Living with ten cats, as we do (it was once up to fifteen, including the outdoor ferals who lived with us for years on our terrace and protected our garden (something we never realized until they had all passed away), it's amazing the number of ways they look at us and things they say. My cat Claude is definitely up to something really, really big that's off the accepted time/space scale. I hope your poetry reading tour is proceeding nicely. Wish I could hear you. Curtis

    ReplyDelete