By adding her tubby tabby to iconic works, artist Svetlana Petrova brings new life to old Masters.
By adding her tubby tabby to iconic works, artist Svetlana Petrova brings new life to old Masters.
When Svetlana Petrova, an artist from Saint Petersburg, Russia, inherited a 10kg ginger cat named Zarathustra from her mother, little did she know the chubby feline was about to become the star of a meme that would see them become famous the world over.
Petrova had been focusing on performance art in her works. But in 2011, while she was brainstorming ideas for the focus of her new work, her friend suggested she make Zarathustra the star. A skilled painter and sculptor, Petrova took inspiration from Zarathustra’s robust form, and started thinking about the works of the Old Masters. Using Photoshop, she inserted him into a piece by Rembrandt, then emailed it to her artist friends for fun.
“They loved it, so I created a website called FatCatArt at http://www.fatcatart.com,” says Petrova. When Petrova realised that her images were being shared all over social media, she started to create more artworks. “I looked for iconic paintings that people like to share,” says Petrova. An avid academic, she adds: “It was a chance to present old paintings in a digital era.”
Petrova hired a professional photographer to shoot Zarathustra and created a catalogue of images that she could blend into some of the world’s most famous artworks. Since the first piece, the ginger cat has now starred in works by Klimt, Van Gogh and Degas (see @fatcatart on Instagram for more).
But while digital art is new, appropriation of artworks isn’t. “Throughout history, many artists, such as Marcel Duchamp, have remade the Mona Lisa; and that’s why it is so famous,” says Petrova. Petrova might have been creating her pieces for the Internet generation, but she still wanted to embrace the techniques of the Old Masters.
To that end, she decided to create a limited edition collection of paintings, spending a year using digital techniques to strip away the lacquer of the chosen original paintings before enhancing the digital image with historical paints. “The digital prints don’t have any extremely light or dark areas, so I enhanced them by painting over them,” says Petrova. “The white lead paint I used is prohibited in Russia, but the Old Masters look so brilliant because of this colour.”
Petrova’s take on the Mona Lisa comes, of course, with a modern twist—it appears as if she’s taking a wefie of her and her cat. Like the original, Petrova explains that the humour is designed to “bring the painting closer to the spectator.” And no one seems to have been offended by the makeover. In fact, one fan went so far as to tell Petrova she had improved it.
The latest work to receive the Zarathustra treatment is part of the National Gallery Singapore’s collection. Heeding the advice of Singapore-based gallery, Art Porters, Petrova chose to reimagine Chua Mia Tee’s Epic Poem of Malaya, using the painting to show how the spreading of information has changed in the 21st century.
The galleries, says Petrova, are more than happy to help her with her work. “Museums like the Rijksmuseum in Holland support remakes because it’s about the spread of art. My site is like a manual on the history of art.”
Petrova, who recently showed her limited edition works at the Fullerton Hotel in Singapore, says she has managed to embrace two audiences. “I’ve married the two mediums—digital and reality. It shows the diversity of how art can exist. A youngster can have it on Instagram and a collector can have the real item.”
PHOTOGRAPHY: COURTESY OF ART PORTERS
