Black Cat

Last week we took the kids to an exhibition of the work of Jozef Wilkon, one of Poland’s most outstanding illustrators, author of illustrations and graphic layouts for more than 160 books for children and adults. I took that description out a catalogue. I’d never heard of him before. Wasn’t just painting. In recent years Jozef – born in 1930 – has branched out into sculptures in wood and art. The highlight was his depiction of Noah's Ark, a faithful recreation of that classic children’s story of God’s mass genocide of everyone on the planet bar one do-gooding family.

The kids were bored of course. The second they walked in. There was nothing interactive, and this generation’s kids need interactive. They looked at the giant rhino for about fifteen seconds, and then started asking when we were going to leave. Nothing was moving, there were no televisions, they were bored. In the second room there was a magnificent display of wooden fish, suspended from the ceiling. You could look at it for half an hour and still be finding new idiosyncrasies in the intricacies of the carving and caricature. Although, obviously not if you have three children with you. (We had borrowed one for the afternoon, because we don’t have enough.) We moved on, continually fire-fighting the let’s-go-home talk.

In the final room there was a painting of a cat. Wasn’t really one for the kids, as the exhibition is presented, but by then they were so bored they didn’t notice. It is a black cat, standing straight up on its hind legs, as if human. The cat has human female breasts. At the bottom of the picture there are a couple of copulating locusts, or some other bug of locust-like quality. Presumably Jozef meant something by the copulating insects, but I’m glad to say I’ll never know. Anyway, I’m walking through this room, past the various paintings and sculptures. I glance at the cat for the first time, it blinks at me, I move on. I look back at the cat, assuming it’s one of those pictures that looks different depending on the angle. I can’t get it to blink at me again. I walk up to it and examine it more closely. It still doesn’t blink, and clearly is just a regular painting, without any blinking capabilities. I stand beside it, bending my head in a variety of directions. Nothing. I walk away from the cat, back round to where I first set eyes on it, and glance round. It doesn’t blink. Five times I walked along the stretch of carpet from which I’d first viewed the cat, wanting to see if I could repeat the peculiar set of circumstances which led me to think that the cat had blinked at me. I couldn’t. It refused to blink again.

There are four possible explanations to this mystery.

1. The picture of the cat is possessed by Satan, or some other more generic demon, and that at some point in the near future I’m going to find myself in a horror movie situation resulting in a lot of fear, huge amounts of screaming and large quantities of blood.

2. I was just imagining it.

3. I’m going nuts, which might explain all the ravens sitting on the telephone wires outside my office window.

4. Someone is intentionally messing with my head, in an Alfred Hitchcock movie type way…which might explain all the ravens sitting on telephone wires outside my office window.

Some part of me feels like I should go back in there, but the large breasted blinking cat’s got me nervous.

Upstairs from the ark and the children’s paintings and the felines-under-demonic-possession, was an exhibition of 21st century Polish art. The children were very excited about that. You can see their faces. ‘Yay! More paintings!’

It was modern art as you’d expect, all guarded by severe Polish uber-women, ready to strike at the first hint of anyone trying to touch any of the pieces, or at the first hint of anyone even remotely beginning to enjoy themselves. There were a few of the art installations presented by the medium of television. These naturally attracted the kids like chocolate. They sat enthralled, watching a man paint a picture, just because it was on tv. Had it been an actual man painting an actual picture, live and in person, they would have whined about being bored and attempted a quick incursion to the exits.

Modern art is as modern art does. Three giant canvases painted beige... “Untitled, 2006.” An enormous hand, with the fingers severed and hovering above it… “Anatomy of Beauty.” A woman’s face and head juxtaposed against a forest… “Coffin Portrait.” I could go on, except I can’t really remember any others. Not that I didn’t enjoy it, but I prefer a crowded 17th Century sea battle scene myself.

The kids’ complaining increased in intensity and finally we relented and took them off in search of cake. Our brief foray into the world of art was over, having not been entirely successful. As we walked out the large front doors, back into a chill January day in eastern Europe, I thought I could hear a low, evil feline snigger, a noise fated to crawl down anyone’s spine.

The cat was still watching…