Tiger, tiger, burning bright,
In the forest of the night.
What immortal hand of eye, hath framed
Thy fearful symmetry.

(William Blake, 1794, “The Tiger”)

We can keep this image of the Tiger like metaphor of the evident obsession of the mankind for the feline (wild cats), an obsession that has marked many prehistorically cultures, that has always accompanied the Eastern and Western culture from the Paleolithic trough the Antiquity to today, and that continue to be present, between fascination and anguish, in our imagery and our dreams.

Many thousands of years the feline was represented in the art as symbol for some fundamental beliefs and principals:

⦁ strength & power (death & rebirth)
⦁ sexuality (sexual power & attraction)
⦁ male-female syncretism

Not only the physical power of the wild animals, but also theirs striped or dotted patterns fascinated the mankind and have awaked the desire to possess them or dress with them. The relation between wild cat and humans was always dominated by tension and fear, by the fight of life or death, but also fascination and adoration, although in the last 100 year the mankind almost succeeded to destroy physically and spiritually the feline.
From approximate 100,000 tigers living 100 years ago, today live only 7000. They have lost 90 percent of the living space by intensive regional and forest use to us people, are processed to drugs for sexual needs and are poached because of the fur.

The patterns of the tiger and leopard are letting many women’s hearts beat faster and they possess not only feline patterned cloths and accessories, but also frames, bed sheets, curtains, covers, faked hand nails etc.
Men’s preferred tattoos are feline representations.

So these powerful patterns had become sign for the ultimate kitsch and human spiritual degradation.

Follow me on exciting exploration of the relation between humans and felines in the arts through the centuries.