© RALPH STEADMAN/HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT
HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM
•
DECEMBER 2012
55
ARTS MEDIA EVENTS
culture
THE
MONTH
AHEAD
Cat Power
Anyone familiar with Ralph Stead-
man knows his
Book of Cats
won’t
be a cuddly affair. The British artist’s
ink-spa ered, frenziedly surreal work
is closely associated with the late
Hunter S. Thompson (for whose
Fear
and Loathing in Las Vegas
Steadman
famously provided the illustra-
tions), and there’s a similarly gonzo
sensibility here: the fat cat with the
expression of an introspective hedge
fund manager, the black blot smirking
as it toys with a mouse, the scrawny,
bat-eared creature that’s barely visible
behind Steadman’s manic splotches. “I
am trying to figure out if I like cats,” he
writes in the foreword, “not whether
I adore them … but whether I can
tolerate them at all.”
dec. 4
