Artifacts | Cats, the New Rulers of the Art World

 

When it comes to art, cats are like the second sex. What is the feline equivalent of Jeff Koons’s giant flowering “Puppy?” Where is the painting of a snarling tabby to counter Francis Bacon’s feral mutt? Are fluffy cats not worthy of the same serious treatment as Edwin Landseer’s regal hounds or David Hockney’s beloved pooches? Who is the William Wegman of the whisker set?

 

At long last, a correction is upon us. You can hear it in the piercing meows that emanate from one of the artworks at “The Cat Show,” a no-claws-barred group exhibition at the nonprofit White Columns gallery. And you can see it in more than 50 examples of cat portraiture executed in every possible medium (including the holographic) by artists that include both heavy hitters like Andy Warhol, Richard Prince and Elizabeth Peyton and lesser-known but notable talents like the aptly named Siobhan Meow, a transvestite whose work incorporates her own pets’ feces, and John Hiltunen, a mentally disabled artist who makes priceless collages of cats as fashion plates.

  

 

Organized by the art critic and self-professed cat lady Rhonda Lieberman with the White Columns director Matthew Higgs, the show handily elevates kitty art above kitsch, while also pulling heartstrings. The entryway displays mug shots of adorable pets whose owners have died or abandoned them. They were not originally intended as works of art. They’re culled from a 2007 public service campaign by Animal Care & Control of New York City, there to signal Lieberman’s not-so-secret ulterior motive, which is to save forgotten pets from being euthanized.

 

 

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