This is not a drill.
Katherine Brooks
Senior Arts & Culture Editor, The Huffington Post.
Posted: 09/03/2015
After Sir John Everett Millais, Ophelia (1850-51)
The cover of
Susan Herbert's
new book features a pretty familiar scene -- a woman with a blue and
gold turban is peering over her shoulder, a single pearl earring
catching the light otherwise swallowed by a black backdrop.
You know the painting.
Except, wait. Herbert's painted woman isn't a woman. This "Girl with a
Pearl Earring" has whiskers and fur and the marked complexion of an
orange tabby.
That's because she's a cat. And this is
Cats Galore.
After Jan Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring (c. 1665)
What can be said of
Cats Galore, described as "a compendium of cultured cats," that
hasn't already been said before?
In it, Herbert continues her penchant for unabashedly forcing cats into
art history, replacing the people in Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus"
and Diego Velázquez's "Las Meninas" with, yeah, kittehs. Imagine an I
Can Has Cheezburger? for the artsy set, that just never, ever ends.
It sounds like a hilarious construct, but the results are often --
even more comically -- fairly serious. Herbert barely alters her style
as she recreates scenes from Vermeer and Manet, blurring the lines
between Baroque and Impressionist painting because... well... who's
really noticing the aesthetic when there's a cat acting out the wry
smile of "Mona Lisa"?
From the cover of Tutankhamun's coffin to, like, every painting ever
created by Renoir, Herbert is leaving no prisoners. She even
reenvisioned John Everett Millais' "Ophelia." All we can say is: Susan,
your devotion to feline-modified art history is amazing. May you never
run out of obscure paintings (or, in the case of
Cats Galore, random scenes from famous plays and movies).
Cats Galore is available through Thames & Hudson.
After Jan Van Eyck, The Arnolfini Marriage (1434)
After Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus (1486)
After Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa (1503–6)
After Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas (1656)
After Édouard Manet, Olympia (1863)
After Édouard Manet, Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882)
After George Seurat, Bathers at Asnières (1884)
Cats Galore
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