LIES MY CATS TOLD ME
(How Lancelot and Serge ‘Made’ Art)
By Amanda Hallay
All cats are liars. Liars and fantasists. However, some cats are worse than others, and my cats (Lancelot and Serge) are probably the worst of all. Entirely disregarding the common knowledge that they were both (being non-identical twins) born in 1992 (in a shed – in Liverpool), they never-the-less spew out (telepathically) yarn after yarn of totally fabricated, self-glorifying nonsense, rubbish of the highest order which respects neither time, possibility nor, indeed, my patience.
They are particularly fond of lies involving ‘Art,’ both of them believing themselves to be at the vanguard of every great Art movement of the past 1,000 years (remembering that they were born in 1992 and are therefore talking shite.)
As I am the only one with whom these two ingrates have decided to communicate, I find I am no longer able to bare their rather obnoxious fantasies alone; with this in mind, I have decided to at last inflict upon others the sort of rubbish I have had to endure alone for the past ten years.
Before I commence upon what is actually quite a pointless task (after all, I am merely repeating lies), I feel it is important to offer up a brief description/explanation of Lancelot and Serge.
Found abandoned in a Liverpool shed (although ‘The Boys,’ as they are known in the plural) prefer to say ‘out house’ because it ‘sounds more dramatic’), we had the misfortune of adopting them when they were six weeks old and still seemed ‘cute.’ Serge, a black cat with white paws, chest and ‘nose triangle’ is extremely serious and has no sense of humour. A passionate kisser, his hobbies include cake and ‘getting comfortable,’ which often involves rotating himself on my chest ninety-nine thousand times before he finally decides to ‘settle down,’ which he does for a nano-second before ‘re-concepting’ his position.
Having modelled himself exclusively on the great Roger Moore (who he reckons he used to live with), Serge is (to his credit) rather ‘suave,’ and enjoys nothing more than relaxing with Bachelor Pad type lounge music whilst sipping his evening aperitif. Calm, sophisticated and rather a ‘bon vivant,’ Serge outwardly hates his twin brother – and with good reason.
Lancelot is a brown tabby with massive ears and vile breath. Having nothing in common with his twin, ‘Lancey’ (who presently claims to be engaged to Ricky Martin) is an over-excitable drama-queen whose one aim in life is to attract as much attention as possible by the most appalling of means. Jealous, possessive, greedy (so very greedy) over-bearing and often mean with it, Lancelot exemplifies all the worst character traits in both felines and humans, and although the temptation to pick him up and hurl him against the nearest wall is often strong, one can’t help but love him; after all, he makes me look better.
Taken individually, Serge isn’t bad (Lancelot is appalling), yet together, they are truly a repulsive pair, and it is their endless lying, which chiefly contributes to their insufferable state, their constant one-upmanship urging each to new heights of sickening self-glorification and shameless showing-off.
With all this understood, we can now turn to the lies themselves, so numerous and absurd that in chronicling them, I am guilty of ‘feeding into’ the brazen self-publicity machine ‘The Boys’ have created. However, as this opus of ignominy is prefaced with the understanding that not one single word of it is true, I hope to at least extricate myself from the following; after all, I just feed them and do their litter. This work is ‘theirs,’ not mine.
The lies are usually spilled out in front of the television; it is always some movie or documentary which sets one of them off, although music and newspapers have also proved ‘inspirational’ to these pathological liars, with Art books holding no end of allure for their fertile imaginations. So copious in number are these ‘tales,’ that to catalogue them in a relatively organised fashion would be a task beyond my limited capabilities. With this in mind, I’ll just ‘steam in,’ hoping that to purge myself of this nonsense – to share it with a third party – will make my ongoing life with Lancelot and Serge a little more tolerable.
CUBISM
Upon watching a documentary concerning Cubism, Serge declared (with his usual ‘bored’ affectation) that it was, in fact, he who gave Picasso and Braque the idea.
Claiming to have been briefly employed as a ‘mouser’ at Picasso’s Paris studio at the Turn of the Century, Serge said that it was whilst working on Demoiselles d’Avignon that Picasso happened to look down at Serge and notice for the first time the white triangle on his nose. Suddenly, the idea of fragmenting the picture plane into geometric shapes formed in the Spaniard’s genius mind!
Already, the artist had been toying with the idea of ‘mass’ and ‘void’ as visual concepts – again, thanks to Serge. Evidently, Serge’s glass water bowl was empty, but Picasso didn’t notice, and it wasn’t until Serge dipped his paw into the empty vessel that Pablo realised the significance of ‘mass’ and ‘void,’ going on to pepper his Cubist canvases with cups, glasses and vases.
The concept of ‘mass’ and ‘void,’ the fragmenting of the picture plane and the often ‘boring’ palette (Serge is black and white) are – according to the feline – all born of his brief residence chez-Picasso (who used to call Serge his ‘Petit Bonhomme’…yeah, right).
Basically, Serge reckons that Cubism was ‘his’ idea (he also reckons that Picasso used to let him eat Paella off his own plate.)
FUTURISM
Not to be outdone, Lancelot (in a fit of fury at having missed his chance with Cubism), suddenly announced that Cubism was all well and good, but that Italian Futurism (as conceived by Marinetti in the first Futurist Manifesto of 1909 and executed by Boccioni, Balla, Cara, Depero et al) was the chief proponent of 20th Century Art, and that it was (you guessed it) he who was at it’s helm.
Reminding him that he has never been to Italy in his life (let alone circa 1910, a good eighty years before he was born), Lancelot decided to blatantly ignore such interruption, going on to give what would actually have been a pretty convincing argument vis-à-vis his inclusion in this movement (if we didn’t all know he was lying and ‘making it up as he went along’).
Claiming to have arrived in Milano when the fishing trawler he was working on (mouser) docked (Pffft! Milan isn’t even on the coast!), he says that he went for a stroll to stretch his paws when he was seized (literally!) by a group of frantic Italians, all of them more than a little taken with his jagged, tabby markings.
Recognising the over-excitable Lancelot as a kindred spirit, they ushered him back to their lair (which Lancey later realised was Boccioni’s messy studio), the Italians fed him a good, fish supper and immediately set about recreating the markings on Lancey’s body onto canvas; those jagged, tabby lines became the Futurist ‘force lines,’ as seen in Boccioni’s The City Rises and Carra’s Funeral of the Anarchist Galli.
Not only did Lancelot's physical aspect lend itself to the tenets of Futurist painting, but also his entire ‘attitude’ was (according to him) at the root of the Futurist’s anarchist ravings. This is not actually too difficult to believe, remembering that the Futurists were into smashing things up, making a lot of noise, and generally seeking as much attention as possible.
Furthermore, the Futurist’s obsession with portraying motion can also be attributed to Lancelot (or so he says); although he is often very still (he is extremely lazy, even by feline standards), when he wants to, he can go like the clappers, and his frantic movements across Boccioni’s living room floor first gave Balla, Carra, etc, the inspiration to depict motion onto canvas, to ‘render the invisible visible.’
One only wishes that Lancelot could be rendered invisible.
I find I am unable to write more at present; it is irritating enough to live with this pair without reminding myself of their daily infamy. However, I shall continue this catharsis in the next edition of The Planet, where you can learn how Lancelot's ears proved the 'template' for Gothic Architecture, and how Serge inspired Manet's Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe, thus providing the genesis for all Modern Art.
God have mercy on their souls.
