It is not the average cute cat book. Instead, it is divided into several sections, exploring modern depictions of creepy cats, delving into the relationship between cats and femininity and taking an acid trip on psychedelic cats, such as the ones Alice finds in Wonderland. The book showcases cats used as tools of communication, like the popular emoji cat Pusheen. It even touches upon the phenomenon of depicting cats as people and people as cats. Anthropomorphizing cats isn’t new. It has occurred practically since cats were first brought into homes in ancient Egypt. Though at that time, cats were considered to be more godly than human.

Cats, with their odd grace and otherworldly behavior, never cease to intrigue, amuse, charm, and spook. The lavishly illustrated volume is a love letter to our furry friends who purr and pounce. In more than 350 stunning pages, you’ll find the best of contemporary creations examining our obsessive relationship with these mischievous companions, whether they are Baudelarian muses, witches, or favored internet memes. The artists in the book hail from all over the world. From Cuba to Malaysia and from Scotland to Australia, the book offers a snapshot into the feline in the modern art imagination.

If it can be done with a cat, it is!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Elizabeth Daley is a writer from New York City. Her articles have appeared in Guernica, USA Today, New York Observer, GOOD Magazine, Advocate.com, Narratively, Quartz and numerous publications globally through her work with Reuters. She was arts editor of the Queens Chronicle (weekly circ.160k) and holds a bachelor’s degree from Bard College and a master’s from Emory University in American Studies. She lives with her cat, Artichoke, in New York.

Cats Rock by Elizabeth Daley
Felines in Contemporary Art

Fake Pretty founder Elizabeth Daley and curator Emma Zurer have been best friends since sixth grade,  where they spent many picture days together. Read on for embarrassing stories about your humble editrix.

Elizabeth Daley, Fake Pretty.com: So, what makes this show different from any other show?

Emma Zurer: It’s an alternative to the uptight Chelsea Gallery. I am trying to offer an opportunity for different people to showcase their work, and I was also inspired by a show at the Morgan Library, a hidden New York City gem—-well I don’t know if it’s that hidden, but anyway, they had a show on surrealism and a lot of it was dedicated to the game Exquisite Corpse, and it was amazing to see what was created kind of randomly with the simple direction of drawing something on a page and then folding it over and passing it to someone else. It started out with poetry actually, and that’s where the phrase “Exquisite Corpse” comes from. Allegedly the first phrase that was created was “The exquisite corpse shall drink the new wine”—they actually debate whether it was “new wine” or “young wine.” I picked artists whose work isn’t that similar, but I thought the group could make its own kind of exquisite corpse on the wall.

Going back to traditional gallery experiences, I just went to go see Basquiat at the Gagosian, and I said to my friend as I was going in: “I bet I am going to smile at them and nod and I bet they are going to just stare back at me and not say anything,” and that’s’ exactly what happened.

Christine Shan Shan Hou            

ED: So do you promise to personally greet everyone who comes to Culturefix?

EZ: Yes. (Laughs) I often think about audience a lot more than most people do. I like to think about how the audience will look at the art and how they will react, and I do want to make them feel something positive. I am not interested in darkness and sadness and questions of what life really means. I wanted to take this opportunity to get a little break from the rat race of this city and showcase people I believe in.

ED: Also, don’t you think that almost every group show (even if it has a theme) often features a bunch of artists who know the curator pretending like they were just “discovered”?

Self portrait by Leah Moskowitz.

 EZ: People do try to hide that they curated a show based on who they know, but people shouldn’t hide it. We should be proud that we know talented people, and we shouldn’t try to put artists into a thematic box, that’s why I am loose about the theme. I have been to a lot of shows where curators use a theme almost as a coverup of the fact they have all of their friends’ work in the show. So then I am thinking ‘OK it’s a show about gender,’ which is more interesting these days. So then I go to the show, and there is maybe one piece that exhibits some sort of commentary on gender, and the rest is abstract art and I don’t see any connection to the theme of gender, and I leave feeling empty.

Photo by Kate Reeder.

ED: So basically not having a theme allows it to be less disappointing? Or just makes it like there are fewer expectations?

EZ: It leaves less room for disappointment, and I want the work to speak for itself. So many shows that have themes force the themes upon the work and it sort of hinders the experience.

ED: OK, so who are these artists and how do you know them?

Emma Zurer

EZ: There are two photographers and two collage artists (one of them is me). I know two of them through you.

ED: And who am I?

EZ: You are the extraordinary Elizabeth Daley who will also be reading at Culturefix on March 16^th

ED: How did we meet?

EZ: We met in sixth grade, and I will tell the story again: You came into English class late and you had powdered donut sugar all over your coat and you were brushing your hair simultaneously, and I said, “I want to be her friend.”

So, I met two artists through you. Both Leah Moskowitz and Christine Hou went to Bard with you. A lot of people that I meet through you who went to your college do a lot of different things creatively— like Leah also makes films and plays the drums and Christine writes poetry—- big up to Bard College! And Kate Reeder I met through another friend —-see a theme here? I met her through Lillian Crowe, who is in her own right a great jewelry designer.

Kate actually took pictures of me a few years ago. Her strongest suit in my opinion is portraits, so she came to me to ask if I wanted to be included in portraits of women in lingerie in their own bedrooms. Kate is really interested in people in their spaces. I was flattered, but also really nervous, but she came over and was able to get some great images—- I was even surprised that they were me.

(Pause while Emma shows Elizabeth the pictures)

ED: I didn’t even know you did that!

EZ: Kate’s also a native New Yorker like me and you, she went to Stuyvesant. I have to get the tortellini……                                               TO BE CONTINUED AT

Superchief Gallery at Culturefix, 9 Clinton Street, LES

March 11^th -March 17^th, 2013

Opening Party March 15^th, 7-10pm 

Thick Tongue: A Reading Series

March 16^th, 7:30-10pm

—Masha Tupitsyn, Beauty Talk & Monsters

Rosemary Woodhouse has ulcers, or some mysterious, insufferable pain that made her emaciated and look like a ghost. She ends up giving birth to Satan’s son. Why is it that when a woman is pregnant in a movie she is somehow equated to a monster? Like Charlotte Gainsbourg in Lars von Trier’s Antichrist. She was so sado-masochistic and witchy that it turns out she actually wanted her son to die. Look at the way that she put his shoes on him. She put a left shoe on his right foot and a right shoe on his left foot. She was torturing him the whole time! Rosemary ends up being “okay” with the fact that she gave birth to the devil’s son. Maternal love is totally fucked up that way.

It seems like it’s more about the way men think about women thinking about themselves. Think about all the those big male directors who make big movies about women falling into madness by way of “becoming” another woman: Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, Brian De Palma’s Sisters, Robert Altman’s 3 Women, David Lynch’s Muholland Drive, and Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan. Of course all of these women are thin, sultry, Hollywood beautiful, and can’t really “become” one another without there being some form of lesbian sex scene.

In Persona, Bibi Andersson speaks of an explicit sexual encounter while sunbathing nude on a beach with a girlfriend and two boys. Mila Kunis fucks Natalie Portman in her fluffy, pink bedroom like a naughty schoolgirl.

‘Beauty’ pulls the wool over everyone’s eyes. So does sexiness. A beautiful, sexy woman can never become an “ugly” woman. Madness only befalls those who are beautiful and fashion forward.

Rosemary wears the greatest outfits. Short sundresses with floral prints. She covers the house with new floral wallpaper; soon her dreams are projected on it. In one of her dream sequences, a group of women lounge on a boat while wearing floral bikinis.

Robert Altman said that the idea for 3 Women came to him from a dream.

Rosemary cuts her hair short and becomes ghostly pale. She rejects the feminine norm since short boy-like hair is not as sexy as long hair. Her husband (John Cassavetes) tells her that cutting her hair is the biggest mistake she ever made. He is such a dope in the movie. All the men in these movies act all knowingly about what the woman wants, or what’s “good” for them.

Willem Dafoe plays Gainsbourg’s husband and psychiatrist. He will mend her wounds and bring back the normal woman inside.

Rosemary is most frightened when she is by herself, trapped with her self and the baby. Like when she is the telephone booth waiting for the phone to ring. Her and her baby alone in a tall, glass box. Everyone around her wants the baby inside that is making her sick and skinny. Not sexy skinny, but hollow. What is Rosemary’s baby, but all the female norms and expectations rolled into one enormous ball in her stomach? One enormous ulcer. What cures stomach pains but throwing up what’s inside?

In Brian De Palma’s Sisters Danielle lays in an angelic white gown on the bathroom floor. She writhes in pain, clutching her stomach. A floral cake is decorated in oozing pink icing. She becomes Dominique.

Rosemary catches sight of herself on the side of a toaster. Her spidery fingers holding the bloody congealed insides of a dead bird up to her mouth. Horrified, she rushes to throw it up in the kitchen sink.

Walter Klemmer straddles Erika Kohut (Isabelle Huppert) in Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher. He shoves his huge cock down her throat. She throws up on the floor. What is inside that needs to come out?

I used to not eat in front of anyone. I thought it looked unattractive. After eating in solitude, I would purge in solitude. I would even try to purge after not eating. Only acids rising up my body. I was throwing up my insides. My best friend in high school said to me that I if I ever got pregnant I would throw up my baby.

I remember Natalie Portman throwing up in the bathroom stalls in Black Swan. I imagine her throwing up a swan and then fucking it.

When you watch a movie, you feel a false sense of privacy and intimacy. You think it’s your baby, your secret, your sexy disclosure…

I see Rosemary lying in bed all by herself. I see her the way I want to see her. She is mine.

**All italicized lines are from Masha Tupitsyn’s Beauty Talk and Monsters (Semiotexte, 2007)

More of Christine Shan Shan Hou’s writing and art can be found on her blog, “Hypothetical Arrangements“

If you want to go a little bit farther…

There is even a professional mask option…

Pee Wee as Plastic Surgery Victim

Plastic Surgery Costume Inspiration

to Honey Boo-Boo Child,

narrowing down the options was difficult. However, after watching many a makeup tutorial on YoutTube and seriously considering dressing as Edward Scissorhands,

the best costume we have come up with is Anime Girl.

Our costume is based upon 19-year-old Anastasia Shpagina from Ukraine who has turned herself into a living Anime character, complete with a questionably *Japanese* name “Fukkacumi.”

Shpagina exemplifies a disturbing trend in the cartoonifying of women long seen in Asia and embraced in America in the form of Bratz dolls and Steve Madden Ads.

Bratz Dolls

Shpagina is friends with 21-year-old Valeria Lukyanova, also of Ukraine, who has turned herself into a living Barbie doll.

Anime Girl, left, and Barbie Girl picnic.

While we will get into the obviously questionable ethics of becoming living dolls in later posts, we want to show you some makeup tutorials we found helpful in achieving the creepy Halloween Anime Girl look.

Anime Girl and Barbie Girl.

Apparently, Lady Gaga has created her own version of the costume, which may be helpful for those of you wishing to get very dramatic.

The basic decision is whether to paint eyes on top of your existing eyes, or to go more “natural.” Since it’s Halloween, we’re going to go all the way and paint our lids. We might also try to do something so that when our eyes are open they also look Anime-esque. We might also incorporate tape to get the upturned nose.

If you go for a more natural look, this woman is a fantastic makeup artist.

In other Haloween news, we are also really excited to be attending the premiere of “American Mary” at Lincoln Center on Friday Oct. 27. The film centers around a young female med student who ends up performing elective surgeries on all sorts of freaky clientelle. It was created by twins Jenn and Sylvia Soska, whose NPR interview piqued our interest. We probably will have tons more Halloween costume ideas after seeing the film, so check back soon.

Also, send us photos of your creepiest most Fake Pretty Halloween costumes! If you are more into gore, Zipper Face was our favorite costume in that category.

We are into costumes that show what is beneath the skin–from cyborg to hand stitched doll to the classic Frankenstein.

However, Hayes work requires closer inspection than my knee-jerk reaction. Listening to her monologue, “Everything Else Has Failed, Don’t You Think It’s Time for Love?” initially performed outside the UBS Bank in Midtown Manhattan in 2007 actually added something to the representations of protest one is likely to come across in main-stream media. In the audio piece, Hayes is addressing an unknown lover, and talking about the hope and disappointment protest can bring. The simultaneous desperation and resignation in her monologue resonated with me. People don’t just take to the streets because they are angry, they take to the streets because they are miserable, because their dreams have been broken, because they don’t know what else in the world to do.

Performing a speech on the street to a lover is about as raw and desperate as the act of protest itself.

In another room, video projections showed Hayes attempting to recite the words of Patty Hearst, an heiress kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974 . Hayes fails to memorize all of the words Hearst says, but is assisted by an unseen crowd of onlookers who coach her untill she gets the words just right. In addition to being a fascinating look into a history, Hayes performance shows the transformation effected by a crowd, as the onlookers coach her. It’s unclear who is actually controlling the speech.

When she was arrested, Hearst was said to have suffered from Stockholm syndrome, wherein she identified with her captors. In Hayes’ performance, it’s hard to say if it was the syndrome talking, or some more righteous part of Hearst that felt the SLA’s demands to feed Los Angeles’ poor were somewhat noble.

Patty Hearst’s mugshot

In one of the most interesting and understated pieces of the exhibit, Hayes has collected quotes about women’s voices throughout history. The quotes show the ways in which different female voices are categorized and qualified often in conjunction with or disjunction to the speaker’s femininity. The phrases appear in an approximately 11-inch square corner of wall space, projected on the wall to be read as cultural projections. They represent times, eras and speakers that are left unidentified, but the words have a unified and familiar quality to them. Some of the statements refer to Hillary Clinton’s voice, others to that of Simone De Beauvoir. Each quote is its own fascinating anthropological study of femininity. The quote that I have collected refers to Hayes herself, and is taken from a New York Times article reviewing the show, in which the piece in question was not mentioned.

Her performances and sound installations mash up soapbox rants and romantic monologues, diatribes and cris de coeur, all delivered in her own bell-clear, strident voice.

Yes, the voice in which Hayes’ work is delivered is “her own,” but only loosely. Her voice is the voice of Patty Hearst, it is the voice of the anonymous, it is the voice of a disillusioned but sensitive generation, it is the voice of the downtrodden yet incredibly unique American everyman. Yayoi Kusama was okay too.

See Hayes’ Work at the Whitney through Sept. 9

Image Source: Sharon Hayes (b. 1970), still from Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) Screeds #13, 16, 20 & 29, 2003. Four screen video projection, color, sound. Courtesy the artist and Tanya Leighton Gallery (From Whitney website)

In the United States, where we pride ourselves in our freedom of speech and freedom to assemble, we have seen an outpouring of support for the Russian rockers, who, it is assumed, clearly lack the freedoms that people in our country enjoy. Madonna thanks her lucky star(s) that she is able to take the stage and say what she wants, while Patti Smith and the Red Hot Chili Peppers sing a back up chorus of ‘shame on Russia.’

I attended a reading at New York City’s Ace Hotel in support of the jailed Russian band, featuring performers including Justin Vivian Bond, Chloe Sevigny, Eileen Myles and many others. It was a full house, and listening to the words of Pussy Riot band members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Maria Alyokhina was truly moving. These women were smart, educated and articulate. There were so many zings, I stopped counting. It is no wonder that so many intelligent and recognized people have chosen to align themselves with the band.

As I was coasting home on a Pussy Riot/freedom of speech high, feeling so fortunate to be an American, I happened to turn on the radio and hear a conversation about the band Insane Clown Posse, who, I will assure you, are not regulars on NPR. The band’s fans, known as juggalos have been classified as a gang and now the band is suing.

According to Village Voice writer Camille Dodero, the gathering of the juggalos held each year in Illinois was visited this year by Homeland Security. Band members Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope are planning to file a class action lawsuit against the government based upon testimony provided by various juggalos who claim to have been discriminated against for their fandom. In addition, the band’s revenues have suffered as stores including Hot Topic are refusing to sell Insane Clown Posse merchandise since it is now gang memorabilia.

Dodero argued that designating the juggalos as a gang had turned a group of self-confessed outcasts into outlaws and targets for law enforcement; worse yet, band members Joe Bruce and Joey Utsler are now kingpins.

It’s true that ICP fans are not known for their good behavior. Juggalos pelted reality star Tila Tequilla with objects and sprayed Faygo (their beverage of choice) as she tried to perform topless for them several years ago. But apparently, a group affiliated with Pussy Riot set fire to a police car according to the New York Times; on charges of “hooliganism” both groups compete. Still, you don’t see the literati or actors or Madonna coming to the defense of ICP fans.

Journalists describe the juggalos as a family of poor, rural, uneducated and downtrodden individuals–they are people who don’t have friends in high places, people who listen to songs with lyrics like: “F*cking magnets: how do they work?” Still, ICP’s music is not nearly as violent or disturbing as most of what is on mainstream radio. Their rhymes would best be described as childish or immature. Since finding mainstream success, Violent J is admittedly cheerful and Shaggy 2 Dope is happy with his life as well.

Juggalos should not be classified as a gang any more than Pussy Riot should be in prison. While it is initially easier to sympathize with the plight of feminists in colorful outfits than it is to soldier on with middle aged men in clown facepaint, when it comes to freedom of speech and the right to assemble, these guys need our support just as much as their international feminist counterparts, especially since this inquisition is happening right in our own backyard. Are we any better than Russia?

So, I propose a hybrid movement of juggalos and feminists: we can call ourselves: Insane Clown Pussy or Insane Pussy Clown Riot or Insane Riot Pussy Clown– the possibilities are endless.

We can don clown balaclavas (ski masks) and pay tribute to freedom of speech and freedom to assemble, each in our own special way. Because as much as I hate to admit it, I am Insane Clown Pussy– we all are.

Image Source: Pussy Riot by Denis Bochkarev; Insane Clown Posse, Facebook

Pussy Riot performing their infamous song “Punk Prayer,” for which they are currently serving prison time.

ICP exploring miracles, including magnets.

Regina Jose Galindo by Alejandra Herrerra

Regina won a Golden Lion in 2005 for her video “Himenoplastia” at the Venice Biennale. She underwent a surgical hymenoplasty without anethesia. The surgery is meant to “re-virginize” women before their wedding night and is often performed upon people of various religious faiths.

Though Regina may pick up where the artist Orlan left off, we are happy to see someone carrying the bod-mod torch.

To see more of Regina’s work, click here.