There is still a lot of prejudice against both domestic cats and women, if a new exhibition that recently opened at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia is to be believed.
Curator Laurie Benson, a cat-lover, has bravely confronted the projections of patriarchy to explore this issue in the gallery’s collection. Some of the works on display in Cats & Dogs are so explicit they will likely be banned in the future.
Interior, painted by “esteemed master” Jan Steen in 1661, depicts a “bawdy” scene in a tavern of a breastfeeding mother with two males. One male is sitting drunkenly in a corner, presumably the woman’s husband, while another hits on her. A cat sits at their feet taking part in the scene.
“Patriarchy and misogynism were attached to the cat until the twentieth century,” Benson says, and they were often depicted in promiscuous situations.
The exhibition devotes a section, Eroticat, to the eliding of cats and female sexuality. A print by a Japanese artist shows a woman lying lasciviously on a rug with a cat. Both are aesthetically pleasing.
The problem is neither the cat nor the woman in Interior but the moralist’s gaze. Steen is making a point and it’s heavy-handed. When asked if the painting was usually on display, Benson said “It’s never off display. He’s a great painter.”
I’m not suggesting that Benson is defending the painter’s moral stance but that the value of this work is somehow seen as separate from its meaning.
Works by Francisco Goya from 1797 also verge on being misogynistic. Where is Mother Going? depicts a grotesque woman in an abandoned rite protected by a cat.
The didactic board question the role of the artist in supporting rather than deconstructing prejudices against both cats and women, given the witchcraft trials in Spain.
This is a thought-provoking exhibition, with 250 works drawn from the collection, that offers some small solace to those who love pets and don’t like to see them tarred with a prejudicial brush.
Domesticity has been a hard road for both dogs and cats and the evidence is in the exhibition, footage of Shackleton’s dogs shot on his ill-fated expedition to Antarctica, blame heaped on cats for catching rats in the Weimer Republic.
Small dogs had a good life for a while as lap dogs in the sixteenth to eighteenth century and cats were also appreciated in Paris for their slinky style, particularly by the Chat Noir nightclub.
There is one really good work in this exhibition, both in terms of its story and aesthetic value, that offers hope for the domestic dog.
Ku’ is the name given to the cross between dingoes and domestic dogs by the local people of the north. The animals are known in English as camp dogs. The ku’ stands proudly alert in the painting, protected by its new totem.
The exhibition offers no such salvation for the cat, a species urged into domestication by humans 9,000 years ago to protect grain silos from rodent attack then used as symbol of their dark thoughts.
Cats & Dogs
The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Fed Square, Melbourne
Exhibition continues to 20 July 2025
Entry fees apply
For more information, visit: www.ngv.vic.gov.au for details.
Images: Curator Laurie Benson outstares Greatest Hits Collective’s Untitled 2012 – photo by Rhonda Dredge | Ku’, Aurukun Artists – photo by Rhonda Dredge
Words: Rhonda Dredge