“This Blue Dog came into my life, and changed everything. It just hit like a rocket ship, and just bang!, you know?” -George Rodrigue
George Rodrigue paints Blue Dogs, and rather a lot of them. Well, I guess really he just paints one blue dog several times. The Cajun Artist George Rodrigue has been painting this blue dog since around 1984-it’s supposed to be a sort of werewolf, or at least, be inspire by a werewolf. George Rodrigue is one of many artists whose names I am familiar with from seeing them on CBS Sunday Morning.
The Meet the Blue Dog story was fun and informative, as most of the Sunday Morning Show’s stories are. The New Orleans Museum of Art currently has a show titled Rodrigue’s Louisiana: Cajuns, Blue Dogs, and Beyond Katrina-March 2 – June 8, 2008.
I have seen these images from time to time, the blue dog much more stylized and codified than it once was. It wears a look of both surprise and boredom and the bright colors never cease to surprise. I like the blue dog images, but I like George’s other works as well-most of them a bit deeper and more tradional. The blue dog has taken on an Andy Warhol kind of life where it is not really art any more, but a product. Which is good for George Rodrigue’s pocketbook as well as his place in the history books.
In my own small works, I have never been able to follow this path myself-I can’t seem to make all my images look like variations on a theme. And that is why I will likely never be featured on CBS Sunday Morning. But I do like seeing the people that are.
