Member-only story
The ‘Trippy Cat World’ of a Schizophrenic Artist
What prompted him to make a “psychedelic version of the Cheshire Cat?”
A joyous cuddly cat playing with her kittens. A group of felines enjoying their summer English tea party. Few kittens play the English game of Cricket while others hold Badminton racquets.
Another scene — Christmas eve of cats where Santa cat holding baby Jesus’s kitten. The kitten has a sunflower halo and all other felines get together while dancing their hearts out.
It is clear that the artist was immersed in the “world of cats”. Gradually, he started humanizing them. His obsession reaches a peak when he gives “godly traits” to his kittens.
This artist was a prominent British illustrator, Louis Wain. Born in the Victorian era, he popularized cats in the period when they were treated only as mousers and not with the same household regard as dogs. Symbolically, they were represented as sinister in the art world.
H. G. Wells said of him, “He has made the cat his own. He invented a cat style, a cat society, a whole cat world. English cats that do not look and live like Louis Wain cats are ashamed of themselves.”
As his life progressed, the chubby and playful cats took a more abstract and intricate form, “a psychedelic one”. Annoyed cats with dark, wide-open eyes or cats looking like owls with vivid psychedelic colors. Ironically, LSD was synthesized just one year before his death, in 1939, and its psychedelic properties weren’t known until 1943, four years later.
What prompted him to make a “psychedelic 1960s version of the Cheshire Cat?”
Let’s find out.
