Cat Art

It started innocently enough.

A couple weeks back, we went out to a street sale. More correctly-yours truly was dragged from the warmth of his couch, TV, and coffee-to stop by the ATM and then serve as the financier for yet another of the S.O.’s  junk antique shopping expeditions.

Along the way we came along a ceramic art piece that bore a remarkable resemblance to our cat:

It does look like the little vermin!

This is a piece of art done by the artist Hajime Okamoto. The caption says, “Don’t go quickly-go slowly”. Don’t try to Google him in English-all you will get is references to a scientist, who is by all accounts, a lot more famous than this particular artist. I had to Google it in Japanese to find this about him:

Tough guy to find!

I’ll save you the trouble of taking 8 years of Japanese and being frustrated to all get out.  He was born in Osaka in 1942. 44 years later he first displayed his art in China at a Chinese university exhibition.  Between 91 and 93 he gained popularity in a series of Osaka based exhibitions and in 1995 he got his big break by being exhibited in a national Japan gallery after which his career took off. Okamoto’s signature thing is that he draws different drawings of six different cats, the most famous of which is Kabamaru (Kaba means hippo-maru means it is a male name). Kabamaru is always drawn as the largest cat in all of his multi-cat paintings. According to the bio above, Kabamaru made his debut in 1998. A book was published in 2003. With pictures.

Like this one:

He’s the big guy with the stripes!

The caption says in Japanese, dreams become one with your heart. He also has done some very interesting calendars, other paintings with just cats in them which he calls “Cat friends-cat family”. But the ones with the slogans, I think are the best.

Which was how the S.O. got me to go with her to the Keikyu Department store in Kamiooka yesterday. Being a credit card holder in good standing with probably every major department store in Tokyo means that she gets little invitations to when the stores have exhibitions in their in store galleries. They may or may not do this in the US, but the way it works over here is that they send free tickets to credit card holders (normal admission price is 800 yen). That gets you to come in the store and see the exhibition which just happens to be on the 8th floor requiring you to work your way through the entire store to get there. On the way in or out, it is hoped you will buy something.

So off we went. And I have to admit the exhibition was quite good. I do like his stuff. One painting, which I do not have a picture of cost 1500 dollars, but the caption on it was most appropriate for me. It said in Japanese, “Shiawase ni naritai kedo, ganbaritakunai!” (I want to be happy but I don’t want to work hard). Sounds better in Japanese. However as a job hunting strategy it seems to alienate potential employers. I’m still trying to figure out why…………….

1500 dollars is too much money especially when paychecks are going to shrink drastically for a couple of months.

However the S.O. was undeterred. We cast our eye on a framed one that was 200 dollars with a different slogan.

It is the one on the right!

The caption says the part of you that is laughing, will bring joy to everything else. 

We went back and forth on whether to buy it-with the S.O. offering it as a “birthday present”-which is not what I have in mind for my birthday present. My vision does not include cats-think Hong Kong Sevens tickets, Cathay Pacific seat, and me in Hong Kong for the Sevens-by myself, evenings on Jaffe Road in Wanchai-for the whole weekend.

Which is more expensive than the painting-but a lot more satisfying!

Anyway-anybody got any good ideas on where to hang it? Or how to protect it if we have to move in a couple of months?

Sigh……….