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A bona fido masterpiece
Garth,
Please!
I was just having a huge verbal giggle or guffaw. I am so pleased that you think enough of the painting to remember her.
Actually I DID try to paint someone quite fetching. I remember my first life drawing class at the Boston Museum School. I was 17, straight out of a very strict Connecticut girls school, the model must have been an elderly gentleman recruited from one of Bostons finer alleys. His naked loveliness (as contemplated in only in the most extreme religious sense) was almost enough to send me on a path toward convent life.
When I was a bit older I went to a Whitney Biennial. In it was a huge painting, done by Larry Rivers of a very unpleasant overweight nude called "Birdie", I think. I though if this is "Fine Art". I did not want to have anything to do with it.
Back to the doggies.Considering the rather odd and confusing trajectory of art in the last hundred years or so let us give this work its due. Compositionally it works, the viewer is drawn willingly or unwillingly into the scene. The dog fur is highly textural and varied depending on the breed. The smoky mood is effectively conveyed by the restricted and warm palette increasing the conviviality of the scene. Each dog seems to have his own quiet story, generating mystery, that sine qua non of the bona fido masterpiece.
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