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Humor

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Humor



(55k)

Dancing with Cats by Burton Silver and Heather Busch. Our price $15.95.


Dancing with Cats gets into a website featuring books from and about the Pacific region because Burton Silver is a New Zealander. For many of us Burton Silver is an icon. I was brought up on his quirky comic series Bogor in the same way that others were reared on Peanuts. His co-author and photographer Heather Busch is also a kiwi ... and she is a major photographic talent. Burton likes "taking the piss" out of his audiences and earlier works have included the international best seller Why Cats Paint as well as an idiosyncratic book on bird droppings What Splat is That?

Recognizing that many folk will take this as a serious work, Silver and Busch add the following opposite the Contents page. "Dancing with Cats is a registered international experiment in inter-species morphic resonance and is designed to test the hypothesis of formative causation". Check it out. Soft cover, 96 pages. Published 1999.

Click here for (some of the) back cover photo (33.85K)

Click here for photo from the book (stolen without permission).


(75k)

Why Paint Cats: The Ethics of Feline Aesthetics by Burton Silver and Heather Busch. Published by Ten Speed Press. ISBN 1580084729. Recommended retail price $24.95.

There will be some who argue that this book does not belong in the humor section. After all it is a serious study of why people paint cats. So please forgive the mistake.

Why did a woman in California pay an artist $15,000 to paint her cat to look like a pig? What made a New York stockbroker spend even more to have Charlie Chaplin painted on his cat's posterior? Why Paint Cats reveals that, far from being an amusement for the idle rich, this seemingly aberrant behavior is part of a new art movement that claims to promote a better understanding of the cats in our lives.

Following the international success of their previous collaboration on feline aesthetics, Why Cats Paint, author Burton Silver and photographer Heather Busch turn their scholarly attention to the cat as canvas. Cat painting has been practiced by Eastern cultures for centuries, but is only now becoming popular in the West as internationally-respected artists such as Matt Gauri in America and Bridget Brükner in Germany pioneer the use of electrostatic paint brushes and modern hair dyes to usher in a new breed of designer cats.

Silver details all the latest trends including Transmoggificationism, Neo-Totemism and the controversial Retromingent Expressionism, drawing conclusions that will provoke, amuse, startle and enlighten. Exhaustively researched and lavishly illustrated, this insightful and engaging book raises important ethical questions and explores the rights of cat owners to reinvent their feline companions in the name of art.


"...celebrates an exciting new art form that challenges us to redefine the feline in our lives. A must for cat lovers and all those concerned with art". L.A. Art Times

"Busch's remarkable photographic studies combine with Silver's in depth interviews of cat guardians and leading cat artists from around the world, to create a work that will be truly inspiring for some and deeply disturbing
for others." UK. Cat Weekly.

Hard cover, 96 pages. Published in 2002. Click on thumbnails below for photos from the book.

Bone Voyage
Painting a Cat
True Blue


Click on links below for related books


Footrot Flats Gallery I by Murray Ball

Footrot Flats Gallery II by Murray Ball

Footrot Flats Sports Collection by Murray Ball

Golf Without Guilt by Martin O’Connor

Sense of Humus, A : A Bedside Book of Garden Humour by Diana Anthony
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Last modified on Monday, July 24, 2006