The Charming Zarathustra Lives on in Fat Cat Art by Cat Lady
S
vetlana Petrova is a very talented artist who also happens to be a cat lover. Over a decade ago, she launched Fat Cat Art, and if you’ve spent any time on social media, you’ve probably seen her work. Her late kitty, Zarathustra, was the inspiration behind these entertaining works of art, and together they inspired each other. Zarathustra was inherited by Svetlana after her mother’s passing, and just as cats do, he left a permanent paw print on her heart and will never be forgotten. I’ve been a fan of Fat Cat Art for many years and reached out hoping to learn more about her work and Zarathustra, a chubby and super charming ginger kitty cat who has won the hearts of millions of cat lovers online. You started Fat Cat Art in 2011, how many works do you think you’ve made with Zarathustra since then? I made more than 200 paintings and more than 60 animated videos. What inspired you to create this work? Fat Cat Art is a very personal project. Zarathustra the Cat is my mother’s cat; I adopted him after she died in 2008. I was so close to my mother, and miss her so much. Zarathustra was and is a living memory of my mother. Zarathustra saved me from depression after my mother’s death. Before, when I created a bizarre fashion show, I made artworks with my other cat Marc, and one of my friends told me: “why you don’t do any art with your new cat Zarathustra, he
18 4 Legs & a Tail
is so funny!” And he was: he was fat, my mother spoiled him immensely, it is her words on the site, that he is “the best cat in the world”. I thought: why not, it will amuse me, and began to think what shall I do. It was useless to put wings on him because he is evidently unable to fly in his physical conditions. So I thought that maybe I can make a photo session with food in the style of Dutch still-life paintings. To imagine how it will look like I decided to photoshop the cat into some painting (I used Photoshop for sketches of the sets of my events and costumes) And I don’t know why I photoshopped it into another painting, Danae by Rembrandt. Then I made four more classic paintings, and I sent them to some friends of mine, artists, and gallerists, just to see their reaction. Never before had I seen serious ladies crying to tears and laying down from laughing. This encouraged me a lot, and I launched the site FatCatArt.com . My other inspiration was the Internet. I dreamt of making an experiment: to create an Internet meme that should be beautiful and clever, this virus should bring some information, some stimulus to know more. People discovering my cat paintings should google originals. Of course, not all of them do that, but a few of them are worth a play. The cat-modified paintings fit ideally to my idea of a clever and beautiful meme. Making this project brought a lot of knowledge for me also, I studied a lot of the styles of old masters, and their techniques, to make paintings look as if they are real paintings made by an old master. What are some of your favorite works you’ve made? So hard to tell what is favorite! I like my Mona Lisa. I doubted a lot creating it: it’s a challenge, so many artists were remaking Mona. The first was Marcel Duchamp who drew a mustache at Mona Lisa’s cheap postcard and wrote caption L.H.O.O.Q.. That was a century ago, and Summer 2022
