Felines in Visual Culture: Review of Cat by Phaidon

Bookish Cats

With a foreword by Hannah Shaw, aka the Kitten Lady, and an introduction by Leila Jarbouai, Chief Curator of Graphic Arts and Paintings at the Musee d’Orsay, this book is encyclopaedic in it’s historical coverage and popular culture references. An international panel fought like cats and dogs to decide what would be included. The panel included curators, cat behaviourists, artists, and the founding director of New York’s first Cat Museum. The image above is by American painter Hilary Pecis, who often includes cats in her paintings. Cats and books are an ancient combo—cats protect the library from the tiny teeth of mice and rats.

Funky Felines

Selections of images are paired across double-page spreads. The mix is eclectic and global in its reach, from ancient mosaics, through the cats of famous artists, to the influence of the cat on global couture fashion. This is cat as inspiration and companion. This is cats in mythology, religion, and mainstream pop culture. Fluffy, sleek, sleepy, or sassy, all of cat-world is here. The Max Siedentopf photograph above is high end fashion—a fluffy Gucci Persian princess, pampered with designer products. Whereas the white cat in the Felix Vallotton image Laziness is much more domestic—a woman lazes on her bed, amongst quilts and cushions, as her pet stretches up for affection.

A Clowder of Cats

Images vary, there is something for everyone: from paw-prints on a 15th-century manuscript from Dubrovnik, to pages from a 19th-century treatise on cats, to contemporary graffiti in Brussels. If you want high art you can discover the little black cat in Olympia by Édouard Manet, or marvel at the macabre Cat Devouring a Bird by Pablo Picasso. Lithe cat sketches by Leonardo da Vinci are a Renaissance delight.

In a more personal and revelatory manner we meet Gwen John‘s cat Edgar Quinet and Andy Warhol‘s cat Sam. We see Japanese cats, Chinese cats, Egyptian cats, and literary cats. If you prefer popular culture, feast your eyes on Walt Disney, Dr. Seuss, and Mog! Did you know a gathering of cats is called a clowder? This book is the biggest clowder we’ve ever seen!

Precious Pussycat

Fumi Yanagimoto’s graphic prints like Dress perfectly captures the bond between human and cat. Regular readers will know that we, writers at DailyArt Magazine, love animals in art—all kinds of animals! But perhaps it is the cat who is our spirit animal, reflecting our aim to be proudly independent, curious, and playful in our work. And perhaps our editors feel that co-ordinating our writers (who are spread across the globe) can feel like herding cats! Diva of the DailyArt cat colony is Pimpa, who belongs to the founder and CEO of DailyArt app Zuzanna Stanska.

Author and film-maker Terry Pratchett is quoted as saying that “in ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this!” And it is true that to be a cat owner is to be the slave of a capricious fur-ball with claws, and attitude in abundance.

Happy Cat, Happy Reader

Cat is published by Phaidon. If you are a cat lover, you need this book. If you are an art lover, you need this book. Cat is glossy, it’s packed full of sumptuous images and it’s delightfully purrrrfect! I left this book out on the coffee table at home, and every family member and visitor picked it up. It was revealing to see which particular image caught their eye.

Our last image does not appear in the book (an astonishing oversight!), but I cannot sign off without the cuteness overload of one of my (three) Cornish Rex babies. Ahhh!

Cat by Phaidon, published in 2026, is available through the publisher’s website.