A Cat in the Studio

Looking through some old sketchbooks, I found a quote I'd copied by the artist Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978):

We must hold enormous faith in ourselves: it is essential that the revelation we receive, the conception of an image which embraces a certain thing, which has no sense in itself, which has no subject, which means absolutely nothing from the logical point of view...should speak so strongly to us...that we feel compelled to paint.

I remember being surprised that de Chirico had written such an impassioned statement. I'd thought of him as a cool customer, whose obscure symbolic paintings have never much appealed to me. In fact, when I looked for some examples, I was surprised to see the colour in them. The ones I'd first seen of his were all black-white-grey.

But then I remembered an anecdote told (I think) by Janet Flanner, who was The New Yorker magazine's Paris correspondent from 1925 to 1975 and whose collected articles and notebooks cover a delightful range of things 20th century and European. It seems that a young journalist couple of her acquaintance was travelling in Italy in the 1950s, when de Chirico was in his prime. They happened upon the village where they knew he was staying and dared to knock at the door and ask if they might interview him. Graciously, he agreed and the two young people entered the studio, bringing with them their Siamese cat who couldn't be left in the car.

It would make a good story to say that the cat's reaction to de Chirico's art led to the scene that followed, but more likely it was the dislocation and the unfamiliar surroundings. In any case, the cat took one look around, leaped from its owner's arms and roared around the room, tearing through drawings, upsetting finished and unfinished paintings, spilling a good bit of paint onto masterworks in the making. At last, the panicked couple was able to catch and calm the cat -- and survey the damage. Of course, they were overcome with embarrassment and mild terror at the artist's probable reaction. Remarkably, de Chirico's concern was entirely for the cat. "The most important thing of all," he gently said to them, "is that no living being should be afraid." Now there's a man who's not at all a black-white-grey kind of guy.

As for our own two cats, Nikolai and Sasha, don't picture them lounging comfortably in my studio as Nik is shown in the drawing above. They are greatly intrigued by the door that's always closed to them, and that's the way it will stay. Two other cats reside there permanently, both of them gifts, both of them deserving a special environment, both of them (especially the fabric one) needing a place to hang out -- that's safe from cats!