Art World Catastrophe @ Hyperallergic
Author’s note: My favorite part about this is obviously that I get paid to publicly call cats out as the garbage nightmare creatures that they are, but the part that makes it a strong piece of comedy writing is the callback to the piece I wrote a year ago about a lady poltergeisting on her date’s paintings. I do have the best job in the world, yes.
It’s a centuries-old debate and one sure to spark controversy, whether your venue is the holiday dinner table, a first Tinder date, or an international arts publication: dogs or cats? Of course, it’s no use arguing with certain people, because they continue to stand behind their flawed affiliation to cats, even when they do something like destroying a historical portrait painted by their favorite artist. Haha! Those little rascals!
The rascal in question is named Padme, the painting is a work by 17th-century portrait artist John Michael Wright, and the insane cat-person is Dr. Bendor Grosvenor, a 41-year-old antique painting specialist who has appeared in five seasons of the BBC show Fake or Fortune, which attempts to unravel the provenance of lost or notable artworks. As reported by The Telegraph, Grosvenor purchased the painting by Wright, one of his favorite artists, motivated in part by the exceptional quality and preservation of the work. In addition to the purchase price of £5,250 (~$6,700), Grosvenor told the Telegraph that he “probably spent the same again cleaning and reframing it.”
Read more here…
Image by David Teniers the Younger (c. 1650), via Wikipedia