Shu Yamamoto’s “Washingpaw Crossing the Delaware” at the Utah Cultural Celebration Center in West Valley.

For centuries, an essential division of labor ruled over humanity’s closest animal companions. There were those humans kept for work alone: farm animals, useful creatures, those we domesticated but didn’t exactly tame. Those we ate. And then there were the dogs, which still had assigned labors, such as abetting the hunt, but which were also brought into our homes and allowed to live among us. One proof of the distinction was the appearance of dogs in art: not just pictures of hounds as part of the hunt, say, but possibly sarcastic images of dogs dressed like people and doing human things like sports and games. Perhaps the apotheosis of these pursuits was the otherwise inexplicable appearance of dogs in the parlor, sometimes dressed as gentlemen, playing card games like whist and poker.

In those years, you were unlikely to see a cat doing anything of the sort. Cats were working animals only: controlling mouse populations in barns and kitchens, or as dreadful familiars to witches and the like.

It is now clear that a revolution has occurred, largely within the lifetimes of still-living witnesses. Cats have finally been promoted to the pantheon of family members. In art, they have been dressed up in human clothing and taught not just to walk, but to live on two legs and use their forepaws like hands. So when one of painter Shu Yamamoto’s four children drew that most emblematic of modern art motifs, a portrait of Vincent van Gogh, but with the face of a cat, the artist wasn’t the least bit taken aback. Rather, he saw it as a successful image that challenged him professionally. What other stock figures from art history could he replace with cats as models?

Shu Yamamoto, “Petsy Ross Sewing the American Flag”

As it happens, Yamamoto was already alert and primed to watch for creative ways to celebrate the looming 250th anniversary of the founding of an independent American nation. And when he tried his idea out, he discovered that not only do emblematic images of American history exist, but hundreds of them together tell the story of the settlement and early struggles of what is often cited as the oldest-established and longest-surviving democratic government in existence. So far, he’s translated at least 500 iconic images of American history into what he sometimes calls “Ameowrican,” and at others “Amewrican” history painting. It may be revealing too much personal prejudice to say that, at long last, we have a reply to all those paintings, tapestries, and embellishing decorative images of dogs playing poker that have frankly embarrassed more than a few witnesses. Just why cats sitting down to the first-ever Thanksgiving dinner or standing together at Concord Bridge may cause less embarrassment is a subject for contemplation and debate. Yamamoto offers the fun of recognizing the pious original source in the new rendition, plus the pleasure of demoting that piety while refreshing some of our most overworked inspirations. There can be little question that some tired images we might glance at before turning the page take on new vigor while being searched for the humorous and oddly noble touches Yamamoto has been able to insert into his playful remaking of what is, after all, our actual history.

Shu Yamamoto, “Minutecats: The Spirit of ’76”

What did it mean when the folks Abe Lincoln called “our forefathers” sang about and identified with the stock character known as “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” saying he “stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni?” It seems likely that there was more humor in the way our original generations shouldered the burden of building a new nation than we retain today. There’s not much laughter to be found in the news from Washington recently, and what there is tends to be mean-spirited and lack imagination. So it feels right that the grand effort to get out the vote that currently fills the Utah Cultural Celebration Center—and will move on from there across our State—features a view of our history that, instead of forbidding us to take possession of it as something that belongs to all of us, we are given to share among ourselves. It is an eminently approachable view of the sound achievers we once were that takes into account some of the positive ways we have changed.

There are 22 paintings in Amewica 250. They are impressively large and the work of a master illustrator. Except for a handful shown in the hall gallery’s vitrine, presumably on account of limited space, none is behind glass, which is a blessing in an age when cheap glazing has become standard, resulting in optical glare that obscures what it means to protect. To see these familiar moments of our foundation given a new, playful, and enthusiastic presentation suggests that even in the midst of the worst moments in memory, we are not done. We can reinvent ourselves once more.

Amewica250, Utah Cultural Celebration Center, West Valley City, through May 30.

Geoff Wichert

Geoff Wichert objects to the term critic. He would rather be thought of as a advocate on behalf of those he writes about.