…on: are we not cats?

H/t: to Theo’s BFF, Jerry Coyne, for the following on Frans Hals:

“I love Hals and his quick brushstrokes that were almost impressionistic in some paintings. He also painted this, “A Young Man with a Cat”, in 1635, which goes to prove my theory (which is mine) that cats could not be depicted properly by many of the world’s great artists. Look at that travesty! What’s with the cat’s mouth? (As often happens, the cat has a humanlike face.)  And you can’t fob it off on Hals being young, as he was 53 when he painted it.”

And now the…offence:

Is this not art?   I renounce that to the eye of the beholder.  This started when I (I cannot recall if I spied it or if JAC did!) encountered a medieval painting of a “cat,” which carried with it limitless hilarity; he/she/it resembled not – even in the smallest degree – Theo…or any other cat I have yet glimpsed for that matter. A Google search then yielded finds likewise peculiar. One friend hypothesised that artists hadn’t grasped how to…grasp implements such as paintbrushes or palate knives; another – similarly to me – that it is an unattainable endeavour to persuade a cat to remain immobile; however, I have ultimately contemplated the unavoidable inference that these people just didn’t like cats!

“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion…”

— RWE, Self Reliance

To wit: jeezaloo man! Just be content with being…The Joker!

Follow Jerry: https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/