Pablo Picasso painted Lobster and Cat in 1965 with oil on canvas. I saw this artwork at the Solomon Guggenheim Museum amid many other pieces, which I thought were getting a little too serious and melancholy for me to enjoy. However, this piece was humorous. A cat is shrieking in the face of an ugly lobster, and the lobster seems unnerved too by the wild-looking cat. These two creatures rarely encounter each other, but I think Picasso illustrates a potential encounter very successfully. They decide that they are enemies and are afraid of each other.
Although this piece is zany, very serious themes underlie it. It reminded me that we are often scared of things just by the looks of them. 1965 marked one of the beginning years of the Cold War, which was a battle fueled by suspicions and fears. And even in contemporary America, so many of our actions are fueled by fears. The War on Terror. The tortures of Guantanamo Bay. And what did these amount to? Some bad people were caught. But many more people who were innocent were caught in the crossfire. Fear created threatening things out of innocent things.
I believe that if Picasso had made this a serious drawing, then it would not have had such a strong impact. I can rarely take serious art seriously. Maybe it’s my own problem.
My friends always ask me, “Kevin, can you talk for one minute without smiling?” And I don’t think I was ever able to. Even when my heart feels the darkness of the subject matter, the words escape through a smiling mouth. I often get into trouble because of this. Once I was talking about rape (mind you, on the inside, I was deeply feeling for the subject) and I was smiling the whole time I was talking about it. My friend was deeply offended, but I have grown unwary of the smile that I wear all the time.
For some people, humor is the only way to get through to talking about dark matters. For some artists, humor is the only way to express serious things. John Kennedy Toole and David Foster Wallace are two of my most respected writers. They were two of the funniest writers out there (in my opinion), but they both committed suicide. I feel as like humor and sadness are two very interrelated emotions, even though they seem so distant. And one has to be understood to understand the other.
How can darkness be understood without the light? How can light be understood without the darkness?
Artist: Pablo Picasso
Title: Lobster and Cat
Date of Work: 1965
Materials/Medium: Oil on Canvas
Duration: Indefinite
Genre: Painting
Venue: The Solomon Guggenheim Museum
Friends? I was alone.
