Reviews for Why Paint Cats (Pocket Edition) The Ethics of Feline Aesthetics

The average rating for Why Paint Cats (Pocket Edition) The Ethics of Feline Aesthetics based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-01-01 00:00:00 Daniel Koppersmith Let's start with the cover [click on image to enlarge] : "The Unimaginable Florescence of Feline Fluttering," 2002. Vegetable dye on Aristotle, Persian. Artist: Flavia Venezia, New York "...An earlier work, "Tortellini per sempre," 2000, which featured an intricate web of delicate pasta patterns on a Cream Tonkinese... was awarded the H.B. Saeed Mohammed Al Paganbani Prize for Decorated Food, in the mistaken belief that Italians eat cats." Next, let's have a look at an illustration purporting to represent painted cats on postage stamps from the "independent African territory of Ayuba" . A quick Google check confirms that there is no such place (Ayuba is a common family name in Nigeria), and that Things are Not What They Seem. No matter, as Heather Busch's manipulated photographs are luscious, funny, and really, truly Amazing. Astounding. Fantastic! I can just about guarantee laugh-out-loud moments in the Painted Cat gallery (which is beautifully reproduced). The text is absolutely deadpan, and really, you want to believe in these cats! The book has a sort of hallucinatory shimmer -- you won't know, and likely will never know, whether cats can really be painted... But perhaps we can judge from the readers comment page [no longer online, alas], which has such plaints as this, from an aspiring cat-painter: "Unfortunately, trying to carefully control and paint two very willful and in the end very angry cats was an experience akin to swimming freestyle through a very large and thick tangle of blackberry while having buckets of dye thrown at you..." -- amongst the emails from cat-lovers aghast at the very idea of painting a puss. But we must remember whose page this is, lest we go adrift again betwixt fantasy and reality... So, folks, don't try to paint your cats at home -- leave it to the professionals! Professional Photoshop artists, that is, or so is my reluctant belief. Let's hope Burton Silver and Heather Busch put together a traveling exhibit of their wonderful photos. In the meanwhile, we shall have to make do with their remarkably entertaining books, which include Why Cats Paint (1994, still my favorite) and Dancing With Cats (1999, astonishingly silly). Do check them out, for even more cat laughs and inspired tomfoolery. Not to be missed. Review first published at SF Site in 2003. Lightly edited, 2018.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-03-07 00:00:00 Danielle Fayette Why NOT paint cats? When you have ten grand burning a hole in your pocket and a cat that can sit still for a painting, this book will give you some great ideas from those trailblazers who have gone boldly before you. The Charlie Chaplin painted on the hindquarters of a cat using its a-hole as the bowtie is the Sistine Chapel of feline artistry.