Cat's Breakfast 1913

Editor: This is Lovis Corinth's "Cat's Breakfast" from 1913, an oil painting with this very loose, expressive handling. It feels dark and a bit…melancholy, even for a still life of a half-eaten fish. How do you interpret this work, going beyond just the surface of it? Curator: Beyond the obvious, I see a confrontation with mortality and waste. Consider the historical context: this was painted on the eve of World War I, a time of immense societal upheaval and anxiety. Corinth, part of the Expressionist movement, wasn’t just painting a breakfast scene. He was using the visceral image of decay—the fish picked clean, the scattered dishes—to symbolize a civilization teetering on the brink. Editor: That's fascinating. I was focusing on the cat's perspective, almost like a celebration of simple pleasures, but the broader social context makes a lot of sense. Curator: And whose labor enabled that pleasure? The working class that provided the means for such excesses. Think about the power dynamics inherent in even the simplest genre painting, who is seen and unseen? Do you think the gender of the artist changes how we perceive such representation of everyday life? Editor: I hadn't considered the gender dimension of this depiction. Now I’m wondering about the historical prevalence of male artists capturing these intimate domestic scenes, and how a female artist might have portrayed something similar. Curator: Precisely. The 'Cat’s Breakfast', then, becomes a space to interrogate not just consumption and decay, but the underlying structures that enable those phenomena. Editor: That’s given me so much to think about! I originally saw a simple still life, but now it's resonating with far more complex social and political issues. Thank you for revealing those layers! Curator: My pleasure. Hopefully it offers you an example of how we can always reframe artworks when engaging in modern dialogues.