 |
| click to enlarge |
The first drawing after completing all text/ or short poems will be the book cover.
Although Chat Noir was in fact a cabaret in the past, I love to imagine...or I suppose it did exist as a companion to the performers, especially to the cancan dancers in those good old days...so, I want one, too :)
My first impression to this symbolic black cat is her pair of eyes, so mysterious with a embedded power which seems telling us, she is not only her companion but protector as well.
The painting in my book "La femme au chat" (the women with the cat) is a version of 1882-1884 by Adolphe Léon Willette exhibited in Musée de Montmartre.
The magnet I've bought there is another version titled "Une paire d'amis" (A pair of friends.) The raw line work of La femme au chat is beautiful but the title Une paire d'amis is much more meaningful, don't you think?
This picture instantly reminds me of a cancan dancer (although there is no specification of this lady is a cancan performer). Early before, most of the cancan dancers are prostitutes not until this performance was highly paid in Moulin Rouge, living of them were greatly improved, as well as being famous around the world.
Besides Adolphe, Toulouse-Lautrec was another artist who always include cancan dancer as one of the element in his paintings; different gestures are artistically expressed.
You can find so many chat noir souvenir now a day in Paris. Designers love to use the traditional handbill version (but wait a minute, look closer, it’s not the original; compare with the one in my previous post). Anyway, I got this playing card as a gift from a Chinese storekeeper of a souvenir shop in Montmartre, so sweet! Merci :D
So, what is you choice?
