Last week being pledge-drive time at the station (wmpg.org, it’s never too late) I brought back some old favorites and didn’t get into new A material. So instead of talking about tunes from the playlist I thought I’d pass along an arresting link from our friends at Open Culture. Here it is, “Nick Cave Narrates an Animated Film about the Cat Piano, the Twisted 18th Century Musical Instrument Used to Treat Mental Illness:”
Inevitably this device reminded me of the work of Louis Wain. He was an English artist who thrived during the years leading up to the First World War painting almost exclusively cats. He painted them in costumes, driving cars, playing golf and so on. This was a brand-new idea at the time, and his work became wildly popular; it went a long way in fact toward turning cats from barn-dwellers to house pets.
In mid-career, however, Wain had a schizophrenic break, and he spent the rest of his life in institutions. He kept painting cats. But now they were very, very different:
Amazing stuff. But would you want it on your wall?
