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Category Archives: cats in art
Cats have been depicted in art since humans began to create. My Kitty Care shares paintings, sculptures, films, poems, literature, anything creative that includes, involves or is about cats.
The 2016 documentary Kedi, portrays the thousands of stray cats in Istanbul, Turkey and the locals who look after them. In fact, Istanbul is referred to as the City of Cats, and KEDI, means ‘cat’ in Turkish. Ceyda Torun, a native of Istanbul, directed.
If you’ve already seen the feature length (80 mins.) documentary, perhaps you feel like my kitty care: Kedi is utter delight. If you’d like to read more, click Kedi.
Viewing is available for rent/buy on various premium channels, but if you have to pay to see it, hopefully a movie theatre near you will screen it.
If you haven’t had the opportunity to see it and happen to be in New York in The Hamptons, Kedi is being screened in August.
There’s many great cat-themed movies, but this is one of the best. Hope you get to see and enjoy.
my kitty care does not endorse any product discussed on The Scratching Post, nor does my kitty care receive payments, or any form of compensation from any company or product on my kitty care.
Picasso was born in Malaga in 1881 and by seven years old began drawing and oil painting under the tutelage of his father, a professor of art at the School of Crafts. His father was a realistic painter and specialized in birds and other small animals.
Although Picasso is famous for deconstructing visual traditions and reinventing new ways to look at painting and other visual mediums, what isn’t so well known is his love of animals. All kinds of animals feature in his work throughout his career, including cats.
Picasso’s Reclining Nude with Cat, oil on canvas, 1964.
Reclining Nude with Cat
The Cat, sculpted out of plaster, in 1941.
Love Picasso or not, he was certainly one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, and we have to appreciate him as an artist who loved cats.
my kitty care does not endorse any product discussed on The Scratching Post, nor does my kitty care receive payments, or any form of compensation from any company or product on my kitty care.
In 2016, Universal Music announced it would be the first major label to release an album not for human consumption. It’s for cats. The creator of Music for Cats is David Teie, an American cellist, composer and music researcher. On the Music for Cats record, Mr. Teie plays the cello, accompanied by colleagues from the US National Symphony Orchestra.
David Teie shares his music with cat friend
photo: Getty Images
But let’s start with this:
Do cats like music?
Years ago we had one cat, our beloved Ludlow. We hated leaving him home alone, even during the day when we worked. If we left him overnight, which didn’t happen often, it wasn’t food and water we worried about, it was loneliness. We knew he missed us as much as we missed him. We plugged in a portable radio and played classical music, very softly. We liked to think it comforted him. Now Toby and Marnie live with us. Even though they have each other, we still hate leaving our cats alone, even for one night.
When Steve plays the guitar, our cat Marnie frequently settles next to him, and listens.
David Teie from University of Maryland created Music for Cats
Mr.Teie produced Music for Cats after he and Chuck Snowdon, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, researched and discovered cotton-top Tamarin monkeys responded to music created for them, whereas they were unresponsive to human music. Mr.Teie decided to expand the experiment to other animals.
“There are not very many cotton-top tamarin owners out there.” Mr. Teie acknowledged, “so we decided if we were to go out and spread the word, spread the music, we should go with a species we hang around with a lot.” He eliminated dogs because there of too many variations in the breeds. “I was worried about having to write terrier music and labrador music and so on – it would have slowed things up,”
Cats were selected, and studies proved the music to be calming for most cats, especially neurotic, nervous or cats abused in the past.
excerpt from Fostog’s Touch (original piece is 11 mines. 31 secs. long)
Music For Cats was self-produced after a Kickstarter campaign raised almost $250,000. Universal noticed and signed Mr.Teie up; the album was released in the UK in October, 2016. Mr.Teie admitted, “I was very excited about it at first, then not excited about it … was I signing my life away to somebody else? Now that it is all done I’m very excited again.”A spokesperson said the label was “thrilled to be part of this world-first project” and predicted “Music For” albums could follow for dogs and horses.
David Teie listening to his music with Crumbs & Whiskers
photo Getty Images
Mr. Teie stated, “…animals don’t give two hoots about our music and they really shouldn’t,” he added, “everybody knows what music is – and animals are not included. If you really look into it, what’s silly is the idea that only one species could have music available for it. I am hoping that in a hundred years from now people will have to be taught that music was once only for humans.”
Hopefully, people will attribute this fascinating and helpful research to David Teie, the pioneer for species specific music. Mr. Teie concludes, “As a matter of fact I’m allergic to cats, [but] I’ve grown from being an admirer to a genuine cat lover now, but I’m still allergic.”
my kitty care does not endorse any product discussed on The Scratching Post, nor does my kitty care receive payments, or any form of compensation from any company or product on my kitty care.
At the end of February of this year, the band The Nearly Deads released, Punk Rock Kitty Cat. Like all things about cats, the title of this song Punk Rock Kitty Cat caught my eye.
I’d never heard of the band The Nearly Deads.
The Nashville rock band The Nearly Dead’s have been around nearly a decade. They are: vocalist Theresa Jeane, Steven Tobi (guitar), Javier Garza Jr. (guitar) and Josh Perrone (drums) and known for, in their own words
“…powerful pop vocals and aggressive alternative rock music combined with their love of all things geek and messages of positivity and empowerment…”
My musical taste are quite eclectic and does include punk rock. Of course I had to give it a listen: it’s got the simplicity of punk, a driving beat, it’s funny, and, oddly enough for a punk band, CUTE!
The Nearly Deads
lyrics for Punk Rock Kitty Cat
Look at mee-OW! Cause I’m a punk rock kitty cat Looking fierce and acting frisky Punk Rock Kitty Cat Taking naps and lapping whiskey Punk Rock Kitty Cat Gettin’ faded, catnip wasted
Punk Rock Kitty Cat” is a fun song about being yourself and finding your place. I was very influenced by The Ramones and the Sex Pistols and wanted it to have that goofy lo-fi punk rock sound.
click on The Nearly Dead’s to find out more about the band and their music
my kitty care does not endorse any product discussed on The Scratching Post, nor does my kitty care receive payments, or any form of compensation from any company or product on my kitty care.
Did you know a digital file can be sold? And a fun, silly video deemed art? I didn’t. I know there’s monetary benefits for Instagram, Facebook and YouTube stars who have a wide enough audience that advertisers pay for exposure to their followers. But this is something different and involves cyber money. It isn’t bitcoin, which I understand, kinda. This is ETH, short for Ethereum, which are uniquely “minted” values.
Stephen Ibsen’s video is a recent example of a ETH sale. Kitty Cat Dance gained recognition as art, and finally earned him money for creating it. This was accomplished by NFTs— NFTs tap into the same interests and habits of traditional collectors, but with a contemporary monetary system. It’s based on the idea of validating digital assets that can then be bought, sold or traded.
Steve Ibsen on TikTok calling out his claim to fame. (TikTok screenshot via Steve Ibsen)
What is a NFT (Non-Fungible Token)?
“Non-fungible” more or less means that it’s unique and can’t be replaced with something else. For example, a bitcoin is fungible — trade one for another bitcoin, and you’ll have exactly the same thing. A one-of-a-kind trading card, however, is non-fungible. If you traded it for a different card, you’d have something completely different. You gave up a Squirtle, and got a 1909 T206 Honus Wagner, which StadiumTalkcalls “the Mona Lisa of baseball cards.” (I’ll take their word for it.)
In 2004, 17 year old Steve Ibsen was about to leave his house when he noticed his cat, Kayla. “I had just bought a camera for a photography class in high school,” Ibsen said. He grabbed the state-of-the-art 3.2MP Sony Cyber-digital camera, and shot her poses as she lounged. “When I was flipping through the pictures on the camera, just back and forth, it literally looked like she was dancing and it just kind of snapped together,” Ibsen said. Later he edited the cute images into the sequence that did make Kayla look like she was dancing. Ibsen added Kitty Cat Dance, a song he wrote and recorded on his four-track.
selfie with Kayla by Stephen Ibsen
The video was uploaded to his high school blog, G-shack.com, which no longer exists. Since then, Ibsen put “Kitty Cat Dance” on his own YouTube channel, which has garnered 18 million views. But that’s nothing compared to it’s popularity as a meme; it’s been stolen, copied, and uploaded by companies that profited off of Ibsen’s creation.
That all changed Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 11:50am. Ibsen auctioned the original digital file: Artwork listed by @steveibsen 1.00 ETH 1.00 ($1,810.04).
Ibsen’s, and other auctions, happen on the platform Foundation. The meme “Bad Luck Brian” sold on Tuesday for 20 ETH, or Ether, the cryptocurrency for the Ethereum ( U.S. dollar equivalent is $38,850.20).
Perhaps some of you remember Nyan Cat, created by Chris Torres. I don’t, but here it is: simple, cute. But is it art? Is it worth anything?
Chris Torres, who started #memeconomy, told Know Your Meme News that the NFT space is a perfect place to bring back the power of memes to the artists who have struggled to get recognition for their contributions to internet culture.
He added, “I’ve seen so many good artists lose out because their memes just get so big that they get stolen by large corporations,” Torres told Know Your Meme. “These artists never see a dime for their work, and it’s always just resonated with me.”
Nyan Cat NFT Sells
Torres created Nyan Cat in 2011. On February 21, 2021, The 24 hour auction took place on the crypto art platform Foundation, with bids starting at 3 ETH. The .gif file (the still of Nyan Cat as seen above) wasn’t purchased, and remains reproducible…
“…but a cryptographic hash of the psychedelic image on the Ethereum blockchain [was sold].”
Note: Honestly, I have no idea what Mr. Kuhn is talking about. It’s too technical and involved for me, but it is interesting to learn how collectors and artists and all those cat videos are currently dealing with ownership, payment and defining contemporary art.
Anyway, this was Torres’s first experiment with NFTs, but not his last. He said, “I am still relatively new to crypto in general, but I see its full potential.”
On February 22, 2021, Nyan Cat sold for 300.00 ETH (about $590,000).
Stephen Ibsen sees a future for NFTs and cat videos
“Putting it in an NFT format is just a great way to kind of put a flag down for myself,” Ibsen said. “I don’t know if other artists feel the same way. It’s a huge honor. It feels like it’s being put in a digital museum, almost.”
Ibsen won’t be able to share the glory with Kayla, the star of “Kitty Cat Dance.” She died at around 14 years old in 2011. But he can with his two 18-year-old cats, adopted when Ibsen moved into a rented apartment in Seattle — the previous tenant abandoned them. Will they become cat memes? Stars of new video art?
Kitty Cat Dance winning bid placed by 0x30b4…D22F — the buyer is only identified as an anonymous line of code, on March 12, 2021 at 2:06am, was 2.00 ETH ($3,620.08)
my kitty care does not endorse any product discussed on The Scratching Post, nor does my kitty care receive payments, or any form of compensation from any company or product on my kitty care.
