A theory of feline aesthetics \: 1c! Oe hye A f pe ail 7 “a oI IS TOM NONE) eh: eae a IleneY CATS PAnNT A theory of feline aesthetics POCKET EDITION BurTON SILVER HEATHER BuscH 1© TEN SPEED PRESS Berkeley | TorontoiS) TEN SPEED PRESS P.O. Box 712. Berkeley, California 94707 www.tenspeed.com ‘Tent, illustrations, and photographs © 2006, 1994 by Conclusion Trust. All rights, reserved. No part of this book may be reproduc din any form, except brief excerpts for the purpose of revie ; without the written permission of the publisher. The moral rights of Burton Silver (as author) and Heather Busch (as photographer) to be identified as creators of this work have been asserted by them in accorda with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.The publisher, author, and photographer are not responsible for any adverse reactions that may result from the use of material in this book. No cats were harmed during the making of this book. Distributed in Australia by Simon & Schuster Australia, in Canada by Ten Speed Pres Canada, in New Zealand by Southern Publishers Group, in South Africa by Real Books, and in the United Kingdom and Europe by Publishers Group UK. Library of Congress Cataloging ISBN-13: 978-1-58008-793-3 ISBN-10: 1-58008-793-0 -publication data on file with the publisher. Rucur: Mindle and Moitle (lef), painting Swinging Swallows, Scented acrylic on card, 48 x 65 cm. Private collection, Pace 1: Misty painting A Little Lavish Leaping, 1993. Pace 2: Beam Me Up, 1982. Acrylic on yellow card, 48 x 68 cm. E Norbert Collection. First printing, 2006. Printed in C 123 4 5678910—10 09 08 07 06FOREWORD y late husband, Dr. Arthur Mann, has been credited with the discovery of representational marking by domestic cats, but I don’t think he’d mind me telling you that he was given crucial guidance by a couple of three-year-olds—one a beautiful ginger tom called Orangello, the other an equally beautiful little girl called Francesca. In 1982, Arthur was staying with Orangello’s owners, the Norberts, in order to study their cat’s prolific marking behavior as part of his thesis on feline territorial demarcation activity. The walls of the big studio were festooned with Orangello’s colorful works, each one carefully labelled as to where and when it was Lert: Orangello pauses during an invertist painting of dahlias to observe a parrot. While Orangello did not chase the parrot, he was obviously put off by its presence and later destroyed the work with obliterative lines. This strongly suggests the painting was a mood piece rather than a representational work.done, the medium used, the time taken, and the ratio of verticals to horizontals. But after five months, he was no closer to any coherent explanation. It was the Norberts’ three-year-old daughter who broke the code. Lying on the floor one afternoon, sucking her bottle and looking back over her head, she pointed at a painting and said,“Moo-cow!” And, “That moo too!” Later in the day, when she walked back in, Arthur playfully asked her to point out the moo-cows again. At first Francesca just stared blankly, but then, twisting her head round to look at the pic- tures upside down, she quickly identified them both. Intrigued, Arthur tried doing the same and was amazed to find crude but recognizable images of familiar objects in the house, like the large wooden cow that was used as a door stop. Orangello was painting real things upside down! At last, cat painting could cease to be dismissed as some kind of instinctive territorial marking behavior and begin to be seen as a preplanned communication. Just what that communication is and what the motiva- tion behind it might be can still only be guessed at. Had someone taken over my husband's research when he died, I feel certain we would know a lot more than we do today. But perhaps Orangello provided us with a hint in his last major work, Beam Me Up (see frontis- piece), which he painted the day after Francesca’s little toy Scottie dog was irretrievably lost down an old well. To us, it is a lyrical and well-balanced work, suggestive perhaps of flowers on a spring day or an after-banquet fluttering of peacock feathers, but to Francesca, who lost no time in looking at it upside down, it revealed the unmistakable pointy ears and snub nose of her beloved Scottie. Nora MannPREFACE (7 you see the cat’s tail? We so seldom consider the feline origins of the question mark that this old written riddle still puzzles children and adults the world over. The classical curled-over tail of the curi- ous cat is still found in most of our written texts as the symbol used to denote a question. It is our hope that by exploring the signs a small number of domestic cats continue to make today, we may rekindle an interest in their unique way of perceiving the world and perhaps derive valuable insights from it. While theories on the aesthetics of nonprimate sign- ing are hardly new, we are aware that the great popu- larity of the domestic cat as a pet means any attempt to describe their marks as art carries with it certain dangers. The growing commercial value of cat art has, for example, led not only to some misguided breeding programs (notably with Persians in Australia), but also to a few cases, thankfully rare, where cats have been 10 trained to create art works for reward. It is our belief that we must suppress our desire to see cats confirming our per- ceptions and values through their art, and rather than attempting to determine the direction of their aesthetic development on our terms, we must allow those few cats who paint to develop their own special potential. Only in this way can we be certain they will be able to commu- nicate their unique, undiluted view of the world and perhaps provide us with the clues we need to ensure the survival and future well- being of all species—provided, of course, we can trust them to tell us the truth. Burton Silver and Heather Busch, Wellington, 2006 11INTRODUCTION he pictures you see below are from a videotape of a nameless male cat painting on a television program in Russia in 1978. It was sent to us by a colleague in Moscow and was our first clear evidence that cats can make intentional marks of an aesthetic nature. In the video, the cat begins by staring at the two canvases taped to the wall for several minutes before stepping up to one of the saucers at their base and carefully brushing his paw pads lightly over the surface of the thick paint it contains. Then, perfectly balanced on his hind legs, he very deliberately reaches up and, holding his front paws together, makes two little black dots high up on the canvas. Dropping back down, he sits and contemplates his handiwork for a while before studiously collecting more paint and turning the dots into two angular smears. He carefully repeats this motif on the other side of the canvas, then takes another, even longer break to survey his progress. Then, as if suddenly inspired, he attacks the canvas with deft little flic completes a series of three white crosses in a neat row, s and and as if to say that’s what he meant to do all along, he repeats the crosses on the next canvas. Finally, with scarcely a glance at what he’s done, he nonchalantly 12 13walks outside to wash his paws. The whole operation lasts only a few minutes, but it’s performed with such casual grace it appears as if nothing unusual has occurred at all. Many people have similar feelings the first time they watch a cat painting. It seems such a perfectly natural thing for the cat to be doing that not until later do they think to examine the cat’s motivation—and when they do, the questions come tumbling out. Is it trying to represent something, an object maybe or perhaps an emotional state, and why? Could it be trying to communicate with us or another cat, or is painting a way of exploring its inner feelings? Do some cats actually have an aesthetic sense or is their “art” simply a form of territorial marking behavior, as many biologists believe? We are much closer to finding the answers to these questions today than we were when we first saw that videotape twenty-eight years ago. A great deal has been discovered about cat painting over the intervening years, and we hope that sharing some of this knowledge with you now may give you insights that could help find solutions to the many mysteries that still remain— grinning down at us out of the branches above. 14 Betow & Paces 12-13: This male Birman appeared on a Russian television program in 1978. Little is known about Russian cat painting generally and nothing is known about this cat in particular, except that the remarkable symmetry of its designs show it to be a highly advanced painter. 15HISTORICAL n 1990, a dramatic discovery was made by an Australian archaeological team working in the tomb of Vizir Aperia, just beyond the west bank of the Nile. Hidden for five thousand years in a previously unopened burial shaft they found the embalmed and intertwined bodies of two female cats, Etak and Tikk. What was so exciting for professor Peter Sivinty and his team was not the unusually ornate bronze and gold pendants that adorned their necks, nor the remarkable state of preservation of their nonmummified remains, but the fact that between the forelegs of each animal was a carefully rolled funerary papyrus containing the clearly visible marks of a cat’s paw. These are the earliest known paintings by a domestic cat and the first conclusive evidence that cat-marking behavior was Lert: The Aperia cats (Etak left), holding scrolls, c. 3000 BC. Phakat Museum, Cairo. 17known to the ancient Egyptians and considered by them to be of spiritual and aesthetic significance. The discovery of the Aperia cats led to the immediate reexamination of other feline remains in museums around the world and resulted in a number of other funerary scrolls being found to contain barely discernible paw prints. Where these had previously been noticed they were usually dismissed as dirt or, in one descriptive paper from the Cairo Museum, as “single vertical smear of excess embalming oil.” But why were these paintings made up of only one or two strokes compared to the more complex paint- ings of today’s domestic cats? A likely explanation is that as cats were regarded as the medium through which the gods expressed themselves on Earth, it would have been seen as inappropriate for them to make a confusion of marks. What was required by the priesthood w: a simple, unequivocal mark of authority. Ruicut: The Xois scroll, c. 5000 BC Berkeley. Here the mark of the curious tail has been painted and then negated by a diagonal—a sign from the gods that could be 3eorge Young Museum, interpreted as an approval to curtail a certain line of inquiry. 18Ruut: The Xois cat, c, 5000 BC. George Young Museum, Berkeley. This young, unnamed female discovered in the tomb of Nestpeheran on the island of Xois, is shown here as she was found, clutching the Xois funer- ary scroll (previous page). In keeping with the scroll’s message, the cat’s tail itself has been arranged in the question- ing form, with the tip ending on the eye, which represents the usual dot or paw print that completes this symbol. 20Lert: A reproduction of the famous tomb wall painting at Deir el-Medina, c. 1250 BC. Here the sun god Ra in the form of a cat completes what is almost certainly the sign of the curled-over tail and paw dot. This signifies spiritual inquiry and perception of the inner world. The work provides clear evidence that cats’ marks were applied as a seal of approval since this cat’s painting affirms the hieroglyphics below, which propose that inner perceptions are better confirmed by two cats rather than one. An explanation of the appear under the cat’s paw is given on the following pages.24 The udjat represents the all-seeing eye, which can penetrate the higher spiritual realms that are unavailable to human beings. This symbol is often connected with the cat and can be seen in various forms on the scrolls and pendants shown on previous pages. Note that the eye of the painting cat is in the form of the udjat. This grouping of symbols represents the ebut, the painting apparatus used by the cat. The two rounded shapes stand for two differ- ent colors of paint.To the left of them, the L-shaped symbol represents the combined easel and paint tray, or lex. Underneath is the stool, or poot, on which the cat sits while painting. The ebut signifies the means of affirmation. This is the punkut, which incorporates the dual sign of the curled-over tail above the oval symbol of ru. Ru represents the cat’s inner eye, doorway to the spiritual realms. The punkut stands for the counterbalanced psychic perceptions of two cats, a kind of yin yang of spiritual inquiry. This almost totally obscured symbol is the nildjat, or “the contemplative cat who sits peering into the hidden realms of the spirit world.” The nildjat represents the triangular form of the cat when seated in the con- templative position with the tail held in the inquiring mode. 25It seems most likely then, that once the cat had made its first one or two strokes, it would be considered to have finished and the scroll would have been removed. This view s supported by the Lapis Lazuli funerary scroll (left), where the cat is shown making a very bold paw stroke with great confidence from a position directly above the udjat, symbol of the all-seeing eye. Cats with their paws raised were always thought to be making the sign of Ra, god of the sun, but it is now clear that they are painting, and the image of a paint- ing cat is generally recognized to be a sign of celestial approval for the inscriptions on the scroll. This can clearly be seen in the Xois scroll (page 19), where we read, “free us from the burden of questions, our trust goes forth without questions.” Given that the curious form of the tail is so clearly represented in the cat’s painting and then negated by a diagonal, it is argued that these words are too appropriate not to have been added later. Lert: Funerary papyrus of the Lapis Lazuli cat, c. 5000 BC. Bodhead Library, Oxford. Note the upright tail position of the painting cat, signifying its pleasure and therefore approval of the hieroglyphic text. 27There is little recorded evidence of cats marking between 1000 BC and the Victorian era, other than a few examples during the Middle Ages when cats became associated with witchcraft and were killed by the thousands. Throughout history, cat behavior has been interpreted according to the beliefs current at the time, so once cats fell from favor their scratch marks and paintings, instead of being seen as messages from the gods, were taken as signs of the devil. We find a graphic example of this in an illustration on an early German story card (right). Here we see the White Queen with her arm draped lovingly around the cat, Betrug, who is making marks on her robe with his paws. The medieval artist has left us in no doubt as to Betrug’s character. His piercing eyes and piglike nose give him a grotesquely evil demeanor, and in this old folktale he uses her rouge to mark out a false plan of a vast stone labyrinth so that she will become lost and trapped in its vast corridors. Ricur: German story card depicting the White Queen and the wicked cat, Betrug, c. 1430 AD. Katzen-Kunst-Museum, Stuttgart. 28 CPR EE SSeS aS Se pe PEP EIE “EB7 i Hae K Awe ep ne x So SY SIRS Wy, Lert: Santo Gato or Didymus, c. 900 AD. Detail of original, 33 x 24 cm, from The Book of Kells, p. 48, chapter 17, St. John’s Gospel (St. Columbkille’s manuscript). University of Belfast. A rare case of cat painting being seen in a positive light during the Middle Ages occurs in The Book of Kells, where we find an illustration of a saint with the head and paws of a cat. It seems likely that this is Santo Gato (Saint Cat), referred to by Giraldus Cambrensis in his Topographia Hiberniae, where he records the legend of 'a cat who “had many toes and did ably st with the work of illumination.” The cat in The Book of Kells does have extra toes (polydactylism), and it is probable that this oddity in one of the monastery cats, coupled with an ability to mark, would have led to its being venerated as a messenger of God. Overtear: Medieval bestiary illustration, c. 950 AD. 41 x 27cm. From a manuscript in the Bodhead Library, Oxford. The cat standing at the easel has taken paint from the conical containers below and is probably drawing a plan of the method to be used to transmute the caged bird and the sleep- ing dog, prey and enemy of the cat, into gold. Such depic- tions of the cat involved in experimentally dangerous pastimes doubtlessly led to the expression “Curiosity killed the cat.” 31By the early nineteenth century, cats were popular in the lounges of well-to-do ladies, and their marking behavior was encouraged as a source of idle amusement. Bowls of flour were provided for cats to dip their paws into and the marks they made were used to fortell the future. Further evidence that cat-marking behavior has been observed for many centuries can be found in several tarot card illustrations. In the Moon card (right), two cats are depicted scooping up the golden waters of the unconscious and using it as a painting medium. Ruicut: The Moon and the High Priestess tarot cards, c. 1924, from the Cat's Tail tarot, Oracle Deck. Both of these cards show marks cats have made with their paws and attribute spiritual values to them. In the Moon card, the cat is using the ever-flowing waters of the unconscious as a medium with which to paint flaming cats’ eyes to guide us on our journey to enlightenment. The High Priestess appears at in the form ofa nd her marks are given equal weight appear on the twin pillars of wis- dom. She has curved her tail into the shape of the horn oppo- with the human signs tha site, so as to present two horns, above which she sits in order to imply a dilemma. 34Lert: Tapestry cushion, c. 1856. 36 x 46 cm. Mary Morris Collection, Ascot. Amongst the well-to-do in the mid-nineteenth century, marks with flour on velvet cats were encouraged to ma cushions, which were then read in much the same way as tea leaves are today. This practice led to the mak- ing of cushions especially for the task with appro priate tapestry designs of cats painting. The following well-known children’s rhyme also owes its genesis to this pastime. Pussicat, Wussicat, with a white foot, On a black cushion your spotty mark put. One dab is a yes and two is a no, Pussicat, Wussicat, give us a show. 37As of the late nineteenth century, the cat had largely lost its association with the psychic and had become a source of interest to breeders as a pet. Its ability to paint was now treated as a curiosity to be exploited for money rather than studied for any deeper motive. In 1893, a general storekeeper in the village of Otaru, in the north of Japan, sold paintings done by his cat, Otakki, that were vaguely reminisc nt of Japanese cal- ligraphic characters. Because of this similarity, he was able to give them a fortune-telling function and use this to attract customers to his store. Stories of Otakki’s ability and the wealth she brought her owner spread quickly throughout the country, and by the turn of the century, pictures of her painting had become a symbol of good service and economic success. Even RuGut: Orakki Painting, 1901. Watercolor on rice paper, 18 x 26 cm. Private collection. Otakki became famous around the turn of the century for her paintings, which brought many customers to her owner's store in the north of Japan. Statues of cats painting, called Maneki Neko, are still put in shop windows throughout Japan as a sign of good service. 38today, many shops in Japan have a statue of a cat in the window with its paw raised in the painting position in order to attract customers. The best-known painting cat in recent history was undoubtedly Mattisa, a ginger tabby who was the star attraction in Mrs. Broadmoore’s show in the late 1880s. Mrs. Broadmoore was, in fact, a rather portly gentleman by the name of James Blackmun who did a wicked impersonation of a rather stupid upper-class matron. If the audience came expecting a serious performance as the poster (left) promised, they were evidently not dis- appointed to be treated instead to a comic act in which Mrs. Broadmoore claimed that the marks made by the cat were in fact pawtraits of people in the audience. Lert: Mrs. Broadmoore’s Amazing Painting Cat, c. 1887. Lithograph, 65 x 47.5 cm, Museum of Animal Acts, Mz Cat-marking behavior was trivialized in Victorian times, as this poster shows. While Mattisa certainly painted, most of the performance was concerned with putting down women who ison. might take cat marks seriously rather than encouraging any insight into what the cat’s motivation might be. 41THEORIES OF FELINE MARKING BEHAVIOR Biologists are reluctant to concede that cat paint- ing could be aesthetically motivated, preferring instead to explain it either as a form of instinctive territorial marking behavior, or as the playful release of nervous energy. Those holding this latter view cite the aban- doned manner in which some cats pounce at the can- vas, allowing paint to fly in all directions, as evidence of what is no more than obsessive-compulsive play activity resulting in randomized marks with no mean- ing whatever. However, to be consistent in this line of reasoning would require us to reject a good deal of human Action Painting as well. The work of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and many other Abstract Expressionists could be dismissed on similar grounds. Most biologi: Ss argue that cat painting is merely an extension of the vertical marking activity cats use to demarcate their territory. They claim cats are stimu- lated to mark by the odor of ammonia salts used as a 43drying agent in acrylic paints (cats will not paint with oils), which smells remarkably similar to their urine. However, while it is reasonable to assume that the cat’s instinctive need to mark i S ter itory may have laid the foundations for its painting behavior, the major reason cats paint today appears to be aesthetic. We shall never know the origin of the primal feline aesthetic gesture, but it seems that wherever domestic cats are well looked after and have little need to define their territories, their marking behavior tends, in some rare instances, to become what Desmond Morris calls a self-rewarding activity. These activities, “unlike most patterns of animal behavior, are performed for their Ricut & Pace 42: Cats not only rely on the scent of their feces to demarcate their territory but also physically mark its position by carefully drawing lines tha point toward them like a large arrowhead. These are clea rly visible to other cats long after the scent has faded. Sometimes cats use the soil that remains on their paws to make even more visible territorial marks higher up on a tree trunk (right). This type of instinc- tive vertical marking behavior is thought to have laid the biological foundations for cat painting. 44own sake rather than to attain some basic biological goal. They normally occur in animals which have their survival problems under control and have a surplus of nervous energy that seems to require an outlet. Paces 46-47: Pinkle, a female Rex, very methodically sorts all the magnetic letters on the refrigerator into color groups. Whether colors have specific meanings for cats is not known, but it is clear they can differentiate between the main color groups and that a few enjoy manipulating them. Attempts to compare this manipulation of ready-made objects to the work of Marcel Duchamp do not stand serious examination. Ruut: Pinkle, Red Letter Day, 1992. Plastic letters on top of refrigerator, 52 x 78 cm. Photographic collection, Museum of Non-Primate Art, Tokyo. After forty-five minutes of very slow and careful sorting Pinkle completes her work by pulling all the red letters onto the top of the refrigerator. This seems to be an entirely self rewarding activity, for despite encouragement from her owner she will only do it when she wants to, and there appears to be no other r ason for her to sort the letters into color groups other than the obvious aesthetic pleasure she derives from it. 48But cat painting appears to be motivated by more than the need to release energy and, far from being the result of randomized pawings, is in fact the product of an ability to recognize and manipulate form and struc- ture. For example, we now know that some domestic cats not only are able to distinguish between colors, but seem to enjoy making spatial adjustments to objects of different colors. We also know that some cats that paint representational images often invert them. Nobody has yet come up with a good theory for this behavior, but some contend that the cat is enjoying an explora- tion of form and structure from a fresh perspective by emphasizing abstract qualities. While biologists are at best skeptical of such a notion, it is interesting to note that the well-known German Neo-Expressionist Georg Baselitz also paints his motifs upside down in order to counteract conventional modes of observation. While the establishment of a coherent theory of fe- line marking behavior is still some way off, it has been brought a good deal closer by the work of Dr. Peter Williams, who heads the Department of Applied Aes- thetics at Rudkin College in Dallas, Texas. Evidence for an aesthetic motivation was predicated by a series of 50 Betow: Studies show that cats spend about 3 percent of their play-hunting time lying on their backs looking at things upside down. A recent theory contends that this may be partly why cats invert objects when they represent them in their paintings. This practice is known as “invertism” and was not discovered until recently because cat representations are very basic and not as easy to recognize when inverted as more complex motifs are.