‘This hungry & boiling’ – that’s where I live today

Since I find myself back in the capital after a somewhat less than tumultuous time up north, I thought I’d do my bit to prolong the life of the very amusing anagrammed London Tube Map, which Transport For London is currently attempting to have surgically removed from the internet…

…strangely, most of the anagrams sound like myspace bands whose invitations I’ve declined in the last month – Swearword and Ethanol, Filthy Seance, Hog Statue? I’m pretty sure they all wanted to be my friend…

…Oh, and the end of the Victoria line is “Tall Man Watchtowers”…

20th century schizoid cats

A Cornell University student’s research project titled “Schizophrenia, Aging and Art” profiles Louis Wain, an early 20th century artist who began to suffer from schizophrenia late in life. While a commercial artist, he drew lots of comics of cats that appeared in newspapers and children’s books.

From the project’s Web site:

During the onset of his disease at 57, Wain continued to paint, draw and sketch cats, but the focus changed from fanciful situations, to focus on the cats themselves.

Characteristic changes in the art began to occur, changes common to schizophrenic artists. Jagged lines of bright color began emanating from his feline subjects. The outlines of the cats became severe and spiky, and their outlines persisted well throughout the sketches, as if they were throwing off energy.

Soon the cats became abstracted, seeming now to be made up of hundreds of small repetitive shapes, coming together in a clashing jangles of color that transform the cat into something resembling an Eastern diety.

The abstraction continued, the cats now being seen as made up by small repeating patterns, almost fractal in nature. Until finally they ceased to resemble cats at all, and became the ultimate abstraction, an indistinct form made up by near symmetrical repeating patterns.

(from BoingBoing)