Lagniappe first today:

Louis Wain (1860-1939) was a popular British artist who specialized in drawing anthropomorphic cats and, during the last several decades of his life, developed schizophrenia—or some other mental disorder—so severe he was committed to an institution. Some think his illness was caused by cat-induced infection by Toxoplasma, as he owned cats, which he used as models:

Wain’s cat art is a classic psychology-textbook example of mental deterioration, for as he became more ill, his drawings became weirder. But let’s look first  at one of his earlier and more conventional drawings of anthropomorphized cats:

Then, the classic textbook sequence as Wain grew more ill; note the background changing before the cats do:

Very unusual, but there’s a fly in the ointment: we don’t know for sure if these changes are presented in temporal order, reflecting a steady and increasing weirdness with time.  The drawings are ordered by weirdness, not by the known time they were produced. But the notion that the cat drawings instantiated a disordered mind became conventional wisdom in psychiatry.

An Atlas Obscura piece from February 22 sheds more light on Wain, casting doubt on the mental-degneration theory of his art:

The first reinvention of Wain happened shortly after his death, in 1939, when Dr. Walter Maclay unearthed eight of his works at a junk shop that would come to be known as the “Famous Series”.

The first two are realistic enough, Disney-ish affairs with big round eyes and fluffy faces. The third cat is recognizable too, but ringed in a rainbow of radiating outlines. The next five drawings descend into organized chaos composed of multi-colored shapes and fractals, as if viewed through a kaleidoscope or laid out on a Turkish carpet.

Maclay was a psychiatrist in London with a penchant for art created by patients diagnosed with mental illness. (He also liked to experiment with mescaline, and invited volunteers from the Surrealist art movement to dose up and draw.) Together with his colleague Dr. Eric Guttmann, he assembled the Guttman-Maclay Collection of psychiatric art. (The collection is now overseen by the Bethlem Museum of the Mind, located on the grounds of Bethlem Royal Hospital, where Wain was a patient for several years.) Maclay believed that art was a window into the patient’s mind; he had Wain’s paintings framed and presented them as the illustrated decline of an artist—from cute to crazy.

Writer Rodney Dale, after a long investigation of Wain, criticized this theory in his 1968 book Louis Wain: The Man who Drew Cats (a good gift for ailurophiles and artists).

Besides mental illness, could there be another explanation for the changing styles? Dale noted that the shifts between representational drawings and interpretative cats could have had another source of inspiration—namely, his family’s textile business. “Louis Wain found joy in wallpaper designs,” said Dale.

And the reinterpretation continues:

More recently, a more expansive view of Wain away from “mental patient” has been gaining currency. In 2012, psychiatrist David O’Flynn gave a gallery talk as part of a Wain exhibition, and declared that the paintings were essentially the work of two men—the artist who created them and the doctor who assembled them and lent them new meaning. But the exact, detailed artworks can hardly be seen as the work of “a man who’s losing his ability to draw or create at all” O’Flynn points out.

But who thought that he lost his ability to draw or create? Up to the end Wain’s drawings were immensely attractive and creative.

I still think the best theory is that the art did reflect the man’s changing psyche, reflected in one item that was unchanging: his love of drawing cats. But you should have a look at Wain’s work, for even if he was insane, the paintings are lovely. They’re also enjoying a resurgence of popularity, as seen in the many tattoos based on Wain’s cats. Here’s a small sample from Google image:

*********

Here’s a trailer for a new comedy, “Keanu,” featuring a gangsta cat. It opens April 29, If any reader sees it, report back to me. I can’t explain it; you’ll have to watch the two-minute video:

*********

Finally, over at Science-Based Medicine, the indefatigable Orac takes after the new fad of animal acupuncture in a post called “‘Cat-u-puncture’? What did those poor cats ever do to deserve this?” Here’s “this”:

Orac dismantles a credulous newspaper article about a Brooklyn vet, Dr. Suzy Ryan, who’s doing a land-office business in puncturing ailing felids at $85 per session.

As we know now, acupuncture in humans is a form of quackery; at best, it “works” through the placebo effect. But at least humans have the choice to be duped or not (I use “choice” in the metaphorical sense). Why inflict this woo on a poor animal? As Orac notes, the “evidence” from animals is just as bad:

So we learn from the article that Dr. Ryan has been “feeding pets herbs and sticking tiny needles in their scalps and for a year and a half” and that these are an “increasingly popular option for owners who have exhausted conventional drugs and surgeries.” It’s amazing how, animal or human, the same arguments for quackery prevail. In the article, a systematic review of animal acupuncture that found no compelling evidence that acupuncture should be used for any veterinary condition or disease, but it’s then pointed out that “but a growing number of vets believe they do, and Ryan’s clients say they are converts, too.” Heck, there is even now an American Academy of Veterinary Acupuncture.

And what’s the evidence? Regular readers will know, of course. It’s anecdotes. . .

h/t: Barry, Merilee