Uncultured Swine, I adopted a dog.
It’s been weeks since you’ve heard from me and that’s because every brain cell of mine is consumed by a $500 per kg Chihuahua x. She beams brightness into my life like a little sun, and I have devolved into a human shaped dog bed, speaking exclusively in anagrams like ‘poo poos?’ and ‘oops!’. As creative work demands a large amount of introspection and time-blindness, adopting a pooch might sound like a shit idea. And it truly, truly, honestly is. Though it’s a shit idea that me, and many of my artistic contemporaries continue to have - and I’d like to psychoanalyse that.
Frida Kahlo’s leathery beast, Senor Xolotl, was the favourite of her many Xoloitzcuintli (pronounced: Zolo-itzu-hajhajhsjxft-cuntly). Kahlo exclusively raised these hairless, South American breeds and, according to my actually real research, it’s because she was an empty, childless hag who wanted hairless creatures to replace the children she desperately wanted but couldn’t have. That’s certainly why I adopted a dog. I didn’t do it because I like dogs; find their company soothing, or appreciate the beauty of our co-evolutionary relationship. I simply needed to fill a gaping hole in my gender identity.
Kahlo often painted her dogs due to the fact that Instagram hadn’t been developed yet. It’s understood just how profoundly she felt about her little doms in The Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), Myself, Diego and Señor Xólotl (below) and Self-Portrait with Small Monkey (above), where her dawgy’s are represented as foundations to her identity and her universe. Not only were these motifs symbolic of Kahlo’s domestic comforts, but also of her native Mexico; the home she cared for most deeply.
Sure, there are oodles fucking everywhere now (57% percent of households have a pet in the UK and 69-fucking-% in Australia) but pets weren’t as prolific throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century. So it’s perhaps made more significant that many of our artistic heavy-hitters loved and cared for animals. Pablo Picasso was obsessed with animals; he owned birds, an owl? Various dogs of various breeds (from Poodles to German Shepherds) yet astonishingly, was still the most predatory animal in his home.
Picasso’s most known canine companion was a dachshund named Lump, who visited his studio with a human friend and barely left. A relationship somewhat worryingly referred to as ‘a love affair’, Lump ran the household and Picasso, who’d previously held NONE OF HIS DOGS, would cuddle Lump affectionately. Lump even featured in sketches and doodles such as Dog and Las Meninas. Maybe the kinship stemmed from their uncanny likeness in stature, or the Dachshund’s alleged cockiness. Regardless, Picasso’s reverence for Lump was clear, and of his tubular muse he said, ‘He’s not a dog, he’s not a man, he’s somebody else.’ Whom? One ponders.
When it comes to pussies, no artist liked them more than Gustav Klimt. The gold-leaf painter was said to have eight to ten wandering around his studio but no litter boxes so I’ll let you do the math on that. I have theories about Cat Daddies, and three of the most cat loving creatives; Klimt, Henri Matisse and writer, Charles Bukowski, do little to quell them. While Klimt didn’t paint his many feline muses, Matisse did abstractions of his three kitties, Minouche, Coussi, and la Puce (The Flea) in his work such as Portrait de Marguerite (below). As we’ve swiftly learned about Cat Daddy-ism, three cats is relatively tame. Charles Bukowski had nine, and wrote of his spiky fur puddles, ‘The more cats you have, the longer you live. If you have a hundred cats, you’ll live ten times longer than if you have ten. Someday this will be discovered, and people will have a thousand cats and live forever.’ He died at 73.
As you’d expect, the three artists tended toward black-cat energy: introverted or impassive dispositions. Though if you put a gun to my head and demanded to know which artist had the most black-cat energy and was least likely to be part of The Chow Chow Club Inc - I’d have said Georgia O’Keeffe. And that, tragically, is how I would die. It doesn’t seem appropriate for the modernist painter, credited with popularising minimalism and the first allergy to nonsense on record, to be swaddled in furry mounds of Chow Chow. I don’t know? I’d always put her in the slightly intimidating, critical thinker pile with Virginia Woolf (who – this just in - had two cocker-spaniel’s and a terrier?). After being gifted two Chow Chow’s, O’Keeffe became obsessed. She eventually had six in her lifetime and was often described as being swarmed by dogs on her long walks around the Albuquerque property.
These revelations incidentally lead me to a point. Midge is glaring at me while I write, the throw I’m sat on between her teeth as she yanks. I had paused (nup. I’m not doing it. I won’t do it I can’t do it- OK I’D PAW-SED) before adopting a dog, mulling it over for some time. I worried that creating was a profound, thinking person’s activity and having a dog frequently interject could prevent me from applying myself - or more perplexingly - being taken seriously? And it’s exactly that propensity for vain bullshit that made me adopt a silly little Chihuahua.
These artists, that I admire and take so seriously, are children somewhere still. I’m a child somewhere still! So I don’t need to think more like an adult - I need to play more like a child! As I finish editing this piece, I look toward Midge, now resting peacefully, and see that the most precious creature to me on this globe, the sunshine of my life, has just pissed on the carpet.
Thank you allllll for reading! and waiting, you’re a wonderful community and - I don’t think it’s too early - I love you. Should I do my review of Hot Frosty next or is that too serious?
Also some last minute recommendations: I did read Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo, and cried. And I did watch My Old Ass, and cried. Also I’m consuming
’s newsletter The s is a 5 like it’s crack every time she publishes - please read.Thanks editor Graceeeeeeee and C U Next Tueeeesssddaayyyyyy xxxxxx
Currently reading Intermezzo swarmed by canines and felines and therefore loooved this weeks Discontent