Ailurophiles unite for Cat, a gorgeous homage to felines created by Phaidon. "There may be no creature on the earth that has captured the human imagination more deeply than the house cat," opens Hannah Shaw (aka Internet celebrity Kitten Lady) in her foreword to this appreciative, celebratory compilation, which features cats depicted in paintings, drawings, sculptures, murals, haute couture, books, and comics.
Leïla Jarbouai, chief curator at Paris's Musée d'Orsay, admiringly contextualizes the art in her introduction, "A Brief History of Cats in Visual Culture." The pages that follow feature hundreds of examples of feline-inspired art through the centuries, their creation details and locations (if applicable), and complementary essays written by a dozen writers. Numerous scions spectacularly memorialized their kitties--utterly unforgettable are Salvador Dalí with his three leaping cats through water in Philippe Halsman's dynamic 1948 photo, Dalí Atomicus, and Alexander Calder's deconstructed Chat-mobile, a sculpture made with sheet metal, paint, and steel wire. Immediately recognizable images are strewn throughout (Disney's Cheshire Cat, Krazy Kat, Garfield), intermixed with whimsical, want-inspiring gems like Lee Sangsoo's Sitting Cat (Siamese) sculpture. --Terry Hong