Object Details
Artist
William Kentridge
Date
2010
Medium
Aquatint and drypoint, printed from six plates, with hand-painting Edition 5/30
Dimensions
Image: 32 11/16 × 64 inches (83 × 162.6 cm)
Credit Line
Acquired through the generosity of Harold Tanner, Class of 1952, and Nicki Tanner
Object
Number
2011.002
A cat is a line, a dog is a dot. The principle of the cat is its spine. Draw any line, add some fur,(…)
A cat is a line, a dog is a dot. The principle of the cat is its spine. Draw any line, add some fur, some ears and whiskers, and you have a cat…. In working with puppets, you can take a feather boa, put a tennis ball at one end, two sticks to support and manipulate the boa, and you have a cat that can sidle, rub itself against your legs, turn in on itself. Shake one hand, and the cat’s hips twitch before making a leap.—Kentridge, Six Drawing Lessons (2014)This is Scribble Cat—twisting, hunching, hunting, the spine the pivot of its activity (indeed, a manipulated feather boa). The staccato marks that make up the body, with transparent sections allowing a view to the background, emphasize the feline’s movement as it cautiously places its feet, its gimlet eyes assessing potential predators. Although not sequential like a film, the composition is almost cinematic; its six overlapping plates provide momentum and movement, like a flipbook. This is a scruffy cat, a survivor, a poster child for a homeless cat always on the move. Homely yet charmingly seductive, its outsized dimensions serve to make all these characteristics inescapable. (“Imprint/ In Print,” curated by Nancy E. Green with assistance from Christian Waibel ’17 and presented at the Johnson Museum August 8 – December 20, 2015)
Discover More
Lo mismo en otras partes (The same thing elsewhere), Plate 23 of “The Disasters of War”
Francisco José de Goya, Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando