Tuesday, October 11, 2011

grey and gold


Truly, Emmett is a grey and white cat, although in a picture like this, I can see why my mother might erroneously think of him as black and white.   DandyLion is unmistakably orange.   I thought I'd managed to take a picture of her flat out resting, but of course this shows a habitual wary expression.   The title of today's post is a kind of homage to Whistler and also to Amy Levy - I became convinced in class, today, that Levy must have known Whistler's paintings of London (and possibly those of George Clausen, as well), but rather than attempting to recreate them as actual images within the text, alludes to them through the language of her own descriptive prose, leaving the evocation of actual art for High but Popular aesthetic subject material that seems to be very like Waterhouse's canvases.

Of course, I wouldn't be weaving a narrative of Victorian painting around two cats (definitely of the Burton Barber type of representation so reviled by Whistler) ifI hadn't left my little camera somewhere - on the plane? - and I'd had it with me at dinner, where a complete mock nightclub and diner had been set up on the other side of the street, and some movie was being shot ... tinseltown can be such ridiculous fun.

No comments:

Post a Comment