906 Domestic Cat – The Cat of Atlantis 1989

Friedensreich Hundertwasser created "906 Domestic Cat – The Cat of Atlantis" with paint on canvas; imagine him building up this image, layer by layer, colour by colour, like he was constructing a dream. Just look at that fantastical cat head, a kind of urban cloud, a floating city, complete with gold leaf windows catching the sun. It’s perched above another city, or maybe it's the cat's stripy neck, so full of colourful dwellings. To the right, those swirling golden lines create an almost topographic map of the cat’s inner world. Hundertwasser must have been thinking about how we build our homes and how our homes build us. There's a kinship between this and the work of Paul Klee, a shared sense of play, but Hundertwasser’s vision feels so unique, so optimistic. Artists are always feeding off each other, reinventing the language of painting. It's so great that painting can be so strange, open, and generous.