Description
By the 1990s, Day was making elaborate works on paper. He synthesized many of the ideas that had occupied him throughout his career, but also infused the drawings with new levels of fantasy and imagination. Past and present are fluid elements, while elaborate settings and costumes bring together art, history, and myth.
A group of masked courtiers in (Masquerade) gather in a palatial interior as if preparing for a group portrait. The central figure in a cat mask may be a representation of Day himself. The artist loved cats, and in the tradition of Venetian masquerade, it is the cat that protects civilization, just as a cat protects a house from mice and other vermin.
