Choo Choo via Louis Wain

Some favorite images of my beloved Choo Choo from Top Cat, 

magically melded together with paintings by Louis Wain.

Camel chase

The greatest flesh producer of the age

I have nothing to say about this, except that if this pill were available now and did the OPPOSITE of what it was supposed to do, it would be selling millions, if not billions of bottles online. There must have been a lot of skinny people back in the days of patent medicine. Being beefy (forgive the pun) and filled-out was the desirable thing, perhaps to dispel the horror of an untreatable, wasting sickness like cancer or tuberculosis. Then you'd at least have "flesh" to live on. 
"Rounds out the figure and gives strength to the whole system" is the giveaway.

Having said all that. . . (Further thoughts on Louis Wain)

Having said all that about Louis Wain and his genius cat paintings, I have to confess that there is one that truly scares the hell out of me.

It's this one.

Maybe it's the vaguely "cattiform" nature of it - just barely - and the expression, most uncatlike, like some hideous grinning clown from hell with gaping mouth and pinwheel eyes. Or is it something else?

If you look at this painting closely, it's incredible. Each detail is wrought with extreme care. The colours are glorious, the pattern full of motion as the golden sprays splash upwards. Taken as an abstract with no natural reference, it's amazing. It's only when you pull back to look at the whole that it becomes disturbing. 

Had Wain not been chiefly a painter of cats, this might have been seen very differently. But he DID paint cats, and at some point this painting represented - I think - a cat, or was it merely some bizarre "cattiform" fractal a century ahead of its time?

We'll never know, but one thing that REALLY disturbed me was that, not once but twice, I saw this painting displayed on the internet THE WRONG WAY. In one of those godawful cubic sequential things, with this one near "the end" (when he went crazy, which meant his life was, of course, over), this painting was displayed UPSIDE-DOWN. I could not believe what I was seeing, because even with its extreme abstractness, it definitely has the general features of his cats. The ears are the ears, the eyes are the eyes, disturbing or not. The mouth does suggest the fierceness of a cat's wide-open mouth when all the teeth show.  But someone put together a sequence of his work, which was probably not even a sequence at all, with this painting upside-down, like that famous Matisse in the Museum of Modern Art which hung that way for years.


  

                                   Right way.


  

                               Wrong way. I think.

But that wasn't the end of it. Looking for a good example of a print, I found the same painting displayed SIDEWAYS. No, I am not kidding! This was on a site offering pristine Wain prints, and even a few originals. And they let it fall on its ear.

If I ever needed proof that no one understands Wain and his cats, I have it, but it's so sad. Revile him if you will, be afraid or scornful of his "madness" and write him off as a whack job, but for God's sake, please, display his paintings right-side-up. Really, is that so much to ask?

Louis Wain: a cat's a cat

I think I was in my teens when I first encountered the enigmatic, provocative cat paintings of Louis Wain. Throughout his life he was moved to represent his beloved cats in a wide variety of artistic styles, including a highly abstract form which was so original and unknown that it sometimes scared the hell out of people. As is so often the case, fear and ignorance hardened the public's  perception of the artist into a distorted and only partially-true stereotype.

Thus a brilliant and inspired, not to mention significant, contributor to 19th century art was jammed into a box of conventional belief and nailed there, a condition made infinitely worse by constant replication on that mindless Xerox machine of a communications system, the internet. So how much of it is actually true?

When I was about 16, I remember reading  a Time-Life coffee table book called The Mind which was full of (I realize now) ridiculous, stigmatizing untruths about mental disorders. Wain was used as a classic case of "the tragedy of mental illness", with his charming magazine cats slowly and hideously devolving into foul fiends from hell: surely, the authors claimed, a sign that Wain had gone irreversibly "mad".

This "madness" was labelled "schizophrenia", at a time when 90% of the population would define the term as "a split personality". Nobody who wrote about this had the first idea what they were talking about, but all at once Wain's work was cemented in a sort of immutable chronology, with the most representative and realistic cats at the beginning, followed by the whimsically naughty greeting-card-style cats, then those oddball wildly-colored-and-patterned things, and finally, the horrendous, scary, oh-my-we-don't-like-that-one cats trailing along at the end. This was proof positive that not only had Wain gone mad,  his very art had slowly but relentlessly deteriorated from drawing-room respectability into something no decent person would ever want to look at.

There is biographical evidence that Wain WAS sometimes difficult to deal with, even antisocial, and could be "inappropriate" (which in Edwardian times was almost synonymous with being a "madman"), and spent some time in an asylum when his sisters had had enough of his strange ideas and angry acting out. As in too many cases, he landed there in part because his funds had run out and he had nowhere else to go. For as time went on, his charming anthropomorphic cats went out of style, as everything else eventually does. 

Because he was an artist in his soul and not just an illustrator, Wain kept on painting, even while hospitalized - and yes, he DID paint his cats in a tremendous variety of styles, from the most purr-rumbling, paw-kneading, whiskery realism to the most wildly, even disturbingly abstract - but none of these works was ever dated. Thus there is no evidence at all that as his mind supposedly deteriorated, his conventional cats relentlessly and sequentially devolved from whimsical creatures to bizarre psychedelic ones, to (finally) those dreadful Satanic figures that barely resembled cats at all.

Art historians who have actually taken the time to research his life have concluded that Wain was likely not a schizophrenic at all, but may have lived with another condition that was even less understood. We now know much more about autism and Asperger syndrome and the many gradations of it, and are even beginning to unlock its artistic/creative significance. From existing records, it is likely he painted his conventional cats in parallel with the wildly imaginitive, even disturbing-looking cats he became famous for. Yes, he probably DID experience a chronic mental or perhaps social liability that sometimes separated him from his fellow humans. But he never once gave up on his beloved cats, portraying them in every conceivable manner, with a few that were so startlingly original that no one knew what to make of them. They just didn't fit anywhere. Happens sometimes with these artist types, as with that other fellow. . . you know, the "madman" who painted all those sunflowers.

The little arrangement I give you here is NOT in any kind of chronology. Nor is it completely random. These cats are here because I like them. The more extreme ones aren't here, not because I dislike them but because they're already getting enough (if not too much) play on websites called Psychedelic Cats! and Wain's Schizo Cats. Each inevitably includes a rectangular diagram cut into squares, with each cube representing a stage of successive deterioration rather than a phase of inspiration. I even found a few paintings with labels like "early stages". Obviously, Wain's originality was a sign of sickness. We are still poking the madman with sharp sticks.

Anyway, as I sigh in my usual  exasperation at what a lot of ignorant lunkheads human beings are, I found this snippet on an art site, and it clarified things a little bit for me. 

"Dr. Michael Fitzgerald disputes the claim of schizophrenia, indicating Wain more than likely had Asperger syndrome (AS). Of particular note, Fitzgerald indicates that while Wain’s art takes on a more abstract nature as he grew older, his technique and skill as a painter did not diminish as one would expect from a schizophrenic. Moreover, elements of visual agnosia are demonstrated in his painting, a key element in some cases of AS. If Wain had visual agnosia, it may have manifested itself merely as an extreme attention to detail.

A series of five of his paintings is commonly used as an example in psychology textbooks to putatively show the change in his style as his psychological condition deteriorated. However, it is not known if these works were created in the order usually presented, as Wain did not date them. Rodney Dale, author of Louis Wain: The Man Who Drew Cats, has criticised the belief that the five paintings can be used as an example of Wain’s deteriorating mental health, writing: “Wain experimented with patterns and cats, and even quite late in life was still producing conventional cat pictures, perhaps 10 years after his [supposedly] ‘later’ productions which are patterns rather than cats.”

H. G. Wells said of him, “He has made the cat his own. He invented a cat style, a cat society, a whole cat world. English cats that do not look and live like Louis Wain cats are ashamed of themselves.”

His work is now highly collectible but care is needed as forgeries are common."

His Keithness tells the story

                  Some men were born to tell stories.

Are you a hummingbird?

"Yes, it's irritating to listen to that constant, tuneless humming - and more than that, the humming is a sign of jangled nerves.

If you notice any of those telltale nervous habits in yourself - if you whistle through your teeth - juggle your keys - drum on the table - then it's time to start taking care of yourself.

Get enough sleep - fresh air - recreation - and watch your smoking. . . Remember, you can smoke as many Camels as you want. Their costlier tobaccos never jangle your nerves."

Lord of Lunacy: the strange world of David Avocado Wolfe

We ride at dawn

The ultimate fuzzy foal video!

My Fuzzy Valentine: a tribute to Bentley, the cat of my heart

My fuzzy valentine

Sweet fuzzy valentine

With you I never would part

You are inscrutable,
It's indisputable

I know you've hooked my foolish heart

Are your vet checks less than fun,

From the vacuum, do you run?

When you meow, you know your chow

will soon appear

Don't shed your fur on me,

Please try to purr for me - 

Stay, my Bentley-paws, stay with me!
(stay off the table)

Stay, my Bentley-paws, no, stay there!
(stay off the counter)

oh well, what can I say. . . 

Each day is Fuzzy Valentine day!

Skydance at midnight

Can a movie be so bad that it's IMMORAL?

There's something intensely gratifying about listening to a reviewer who becomes so incensed at how abysmally rotten a movie is that he literally begins screaming. This review had all the beauty and sincerity that the movie (apparently - I didn't see it, and won't) lacked. The thing is, everyone constantly says "don't  be negative!" and "find the good in things!" But if a movie is an absolute insult to the buying public, if it's so poorly, slap-dashedly made, if the actors are so ill-motivated that they aren't even phoning it in, and - worst of all - if CATS are being exploited (even if they're artificially-generated, not-real cats), then a critic ought to let rip with every bit of vocal protest he can muster.

This guy, I can tell, knows cats, "has" cats (meaning he is possessed by them), gets them, and thus finds it utterly offensive that this moviemaker has allowed them to be portrayed in such a horrendously disrespectful fashion. Of course Christopher Walken is in this movie playing the Magic Cat Man, or whatever he is, and tons of people praised his performance even if he seemed somewhat "cat"-a-tonic in it (I have a theory his brain battery is slowly running down, perhaps from too much smoking). I am learning there are those who praise EVERYTHING Christopher Walken does, and it confuses me. He seems to inspire a die-hard loyalty that has nothing to do with the quality of his performances.

Meantime, this critic, this wonderful man, absolutely lets go with great shouts of protest over this badly-made and nonsensical thing. The premise of it - hard-nosed businessman magically changes bodies with a house cat in order to learn an Important Life Lesson - sounds like something out of the '90s, if not the mid '80s. And it's Kevin Spacey, people - by all that is rotten, it's Kevin Spacey.

Now that we know a little bit more about Kevin Spacey (you know, the guy who was accused of molesting an adolescent boy and tweeted in response, "Gee, too bad about that, if it happened I mean, but I was too drunk to remember", then went on and on about his wonderful new gay lifestyle, as if anyone was surprised), which no one did back in 2016, it only lends the production ever more abysmal depths of wretchedness. It sinks to the level of immorality, which for a lighthearted family comedy is perhaps a first.

I don't know why this is, but Kevin Spacey reminds me of a pair of navy blue polyester pants from 1970 that someone has worn every day for the past six years without washing them. Ever. His personality stinks in just that rancid, unavoidable, inexcusable, unforgiveably embarrassing way. He is contesting the assault charges and smirking around and happily finding his weaselly, rancid way back into the public's good graces. No doubt he'll win, but as far as I am concerned, the damage has been done. He will always be stinking pants to me.

And Walken. I'm not sure. I've been sort of dissecting him as a subject lately, just because that's what I do on this blog, I sort of get stuck on one subject until I go on to the next one. It's interesting to go on YouTube and see ten-minute chunks of his movies from the past forty (!) years, because he seems to leap from age to age, until he is somehow every age at once. He's not. He's an old man now and mighty saggy, and his  brain seems to be in a fog. 

When he played Captain Hook, he put no energy into the part at all. His singing was even more wobbly and unmusical than usual. I watched just a snippet of Cyril Ritchard, the original Broadway Hook, and could not fail to notice the roistering, heel-clicking glee of his performance, the ripping good time he was having up there, and the spooky old-school ability to touch his audience, visible even on an old TV kinescope from 1953. Ritchard founded the subversive notion of pirate as King of Camp, glamourous eyes, long curly wig, beauty mark and all - an image endlessly replicated in movies like Pirates of the Caribbean. Walken merely looks as if he has been given a temporary face-lift, rendering his face tight, immobile, and queerly Asian (and with the worst painted-on eyebrows in stage history).

So what's my point? It's late, I don't have one, I'm rambling. It's all about cats, bad movies, Walken, pirates, and people who have run out of  steam. But not this guy! I've watched his rant several times, and it's a good antidote to apathy and frustration. Just blows it out of the ball park. I think I will watch it again.

"I hear dead people!" The Magnificent Mortuary Band

Peter Pan Live! Christopher Walken as Captain Hook: WTF?

                 
                          WTF was that - ???

Things you can do while wearing a corset

You can skate in it!

Shoot arrows in it!

Play golf in it!

Achieve Military Form!

Get stared at by strange men!

Trample on other women's corsets!

Earn the nickname "Old Ironsides"!

(Or Armorside?)

You can be Modeled to Fit.

Become a pool shark.

Achieve Perfect Poise.

Force them on your children.

Go electric.

Oooooooo-la-laaaaaaa!

Hide inside it like a ship in a bottle.

Turn it into a planter so little angels can photograph it.