My Favorite George Rodrigue Painting

When we’re away, there are lots of things we miss about our house:  the oak tree in the courtyard, the ships passing on the Mississippi, Mr. Possum calling through his megaphone (“I have oranges and bananas….”), the smell of red beans with andouille (like today), the way this old 1830 house shakes on a stormy afternoon, the light in the second floor windows, and for me, always, the Loup-garou.

It’s my favorite painting.  It always has been.

The first time I saw it was a Sunday afternoon in the spring of 1991, a day that changed my life.  I walked into the Rodrigue Gallery on Royal Street in the French Quarter to visit a friend of mine who managed the gallery.  At the time I was working my way through graduate school at Tulane University with thirty-five hours a week at Ann Taylor.  I had been doing this for four years, starting back in San Antonio, where I was an undergraduate student at Trinity University, and I was starting to worry that my college job would become my future.  I liked working at Ann Taylor. I liked my co-workers, my customers, and of course the clothing discount.  Yet I knew that if I didn’t take a chance and try, the art world would be lost to me after college.

On top of that, I was twenty-four years old and already tired.

I walked into the gallery that day to meet with my friend --- not to work there, but to see if he had ideas for some gallery that might set me on my path towards museum work.  My studies focused on the Minoan and Mycenaean cultures of ancient Greece (a place I have yet to visit), and I was similarly drawn to the Northern Renaissance and even Pre-Colombian cultures.  Contemporary art was far from my mind, and my exposure to modern art was limited to the Vienna Secessionists of early 20^th century Austria --- Schiele, Kokoschka, Klimt.  I spent eight months in Vienna on a study abroad program in 1988, and when I wasn’t at the Kunsthistorisches Museum staring at Vermeer’s The Artist in his Studio or seeking out 15^th century religious altars in outlying villages, I was visiting Klimt’s Adam and Eve at the Schloss Belvedere (I had a wild idea that my mother was Klimt’s Eve reincarnated). 

And so art had almost a mystical pull for me, even from the beginning, probably starting with my mother’s paintings and her treasured art books, and then the King Tut exhibit at the New Orleans Museum of Art in 1977, and maybe even the Pensacola Art Fair or the craft tents at the Destin Seafood Festival (Have I mentioned that I grew up in Fort Walton Beach, Florida?).  I’ve always tried to imagine the artist’s hand as it applied the paint or molded the clay.  Where did their ideas come from?  How did I miss that gene?  Where can I get some of that thought, that ability, that expression, and especially the bold guts it takes just to take something from in here and put it out there? (notwithstanding this blog...)

I knew of George’s Cajun paintings, although I’d never seen one in person.  I’d never been to Lafayette, and for that matter I’d never walked around the French Quarter.  There was never time.  I went to the Rodrigue Gallery expecting Cajun festival posters and folk art, I think.  (Truth be told, I may not have thought about it at all.  I just wanted advice on a job.)

The minute I stepped through the door, I stopped and stared at the far wall.  It held one large (6x4 foot) painting in the middle, and possibly some others that I didn’t notice and don’t remember.  Without glancing at my friend, I walked right up to it, stared at it, and put my hands on it.  I couldn’t help it.  I was stunned by the power in this painting, by the idea of some hand applying that thick goopy paint, by blending it just so, by making something all about (and yet not the least bit about) one strong shape.  (I learned later that it was George’s first painting of the Blue Dog by itself, removed from the Cajun background).  I didn’t even recognize it as a dog. 

“What is it?”  I whispered to my friend.

“It’s the Blue Dog.”  He said. 

And as he tried without success to steer me towards the few remaining Cajun paintings and then refer me to several galleries in town, I knew that this gallery and only this gallery was for me.  Within a week I had quit Ann Taylor, dropped out of school, and was spending all of my time with the Loup-garou in the Rodrigue Gallery.

Within six months I had moved to Carmel, California (my first trip ever to the West coast), where I would spend six years at Galerie Blue Dog.  My first day at work, I called my friend back in New Orleans: 

“Any chance you would send me the Loup-garou?”

“No way.  Too expensive to ship.”

And a few months later:

“Since it still hasn’t sold, would you reconsider?”

He finally agreed that if it didn’t sell in one year, he would send it to Carmel.  Which he did.  The feeling was no different at that time than it is now. 

We were reunited until one day in 1993 when I was away opening the Rodrigue Gallery in Munich, Germany, and my co-worker Sandra (who is still in Carmel and remembers this story well) sold the Loup-garou.  At $50,000 it was the biggest sale we’d ever had in Carmel, and she saved the surprise for my return.

But the gallery’s success did not assuage my disappointment.  I talked about the Loup-garou for years.  And in 1997 when George and I married, I still talked about it.

Unbeknownst to me, George began a mission to find the Loup-garou and get it back. And in 2002, he surprised me (shocked me more like it --- similar to that spring day eleven years earlier), and we hung it in our home for the first time.

I’m sitting in our house as I write this, exchanging a stare with the Loup-garou, and I’m as confused and mesmerized and weak-kneed as I was almost nineteen years ago.

Paintings tend to take on a life of their own, far beyond the artist’s intent or the owner’s collection, or even (perhaps George’s most frustrating battle) some collective assumption about them. The greatest works of art pose questions and never provide the answers, long after the artist is dead. Consider the Mona Lisa, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, The Burghers of Calais.

The reason the Blue Dog lasts is not because it’s a dog.  I like dogs.  But I’ve never had a dog and I’ve never been a ‘dog person.’   As I mentioned above, I didn’t even recognize the Blue Dog as a dog.  The Blue Dog lasts because it’s painted and designed well, because it’s rooted in twenty-five years of Cajun paintings, because no matter how long we wait, it will never fully explain itself, and because, more than anything else, it is painted by George Rodrigue ---- I’m not talking about his intent in creating a work, or his statements within the work, or all of the many ways he suggests to the public for interpretation.  I’m talking about something far more simple and unique to him:  his style.

Originally I was going to make this a two-part blog, the other part focusing on George’s least favorite painting.  But I got carried away, so I’ll save that for another day.

Wendy