GEORGE RODRIGUE

(1944-2013)

My Life is on the Wall for All to See 14 1/8 x 11 in. (35.9 x 27.9 cm.)

Footnotes

Provenance
The Rodrigue Gallery of New Orleans, Inc.
Acquired by the present owner from the above, October 2, 1997.

This lot is accompanied by a signed copy of the book Blue Dog by George Rodrigue and Lawrence S. Freundlich first published in 1994.

George Rodrigue's My Life is on the Wall for All to See is an exceptional example from the artist's iconic Blue Dog series and is representative of Rodrigue's distinctive voice in late twentieth-century American Art. Rodrigue was born in New Iberia, Louisiana in 1944 within the cultural world of the Cajuns. At age nine, he contracted Polio and spent his childhood years confined to his bed. It was during these formative years that he directed his energies toward drawing and painting and eventually went on to study art at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. He returned to Louisiana in the late 1960s determined to record the people, customs, and landscapes of his Cajun heritage through a modern Southern lens. With this artistic mission in mind, Rodrigue's early work is defined by dark backgrounds and flattened forms that translate motifs of regional memory, such as sprawling oak trees and glowing figures, that reflect both the intimacy and the isolation of rural Louisiana.

Rodrigue's artistic breakthrough came when he was asked to illustrate the forty short stories by Chris Segura for his 1984 book, Bayou, which has been described as a collection of "Folk yarns brimming with 'gumbo, voodoo, mystery, and ghosts.'" (G. Danto, M. Lewis, The Art of George Rodrigue, New York, 2003, p. 30). To illustrate the tale of the loup-garou, a werewolf-like creature from Cajun folklore, Rodrigue conceived what would become his Blue Dog motif rendered in shades of blue and gray with wide, bright eyes. For his model, Rodrigue turned to his late terrier mut, Tiffany, who haunted his memory. In the creation of his first image of the Blue Dog, Rodrigue reflected, "I was utterly unconscious that she had somehow found a place to live within the world of my imagination, no matter how bizarre a metamorphosis my imagination had wrought for her...In that first painting, there she was, stuck like a label right on the surface, refusing to be dragged back into a landscape or melt into the ghostly past. She was bursting out, and I was determined to heed her, but fearful of surrendering to her influence." (as quoted in G. Rodrigue, L.S. Freundlich, Blue Dog, New York, 1994, n.p.) Although Rodrigue's Blue Dog originated as a ghostly figure rooted in Cajun folklore, it quickly transcended into an image that would define his mature style and solidify his reputation.

By the 1990s, the Blue Dog quickly evolved into a complex visual archetype that Rodrigue would reimagine into countless variations and situate in humorous, commercial, political, educational, and philosophical scenarios among many others. My Life is on the Wall for All to See is prototypical of Rodrigue's body of work where his Blue Dog is displaced into an abstract environment—in the case of the present work, against a blazing red background patterned in black and purple designs. In these works, the viewer is confronted directly with Blue Dog's unflinching stare and is invited to participate in a meditative study on Rodrigue's unique flat style, color pallet, and emotional tone. Throughout the entirety of his Blue Dog series, the Blue Dog became a cipher for the artist that he could explore identity, mortality, and emotion. For Rodrigue, "The Blue Dog never changes position, never changes color, but it changes in meaning every time I paint it." (as quoted in G. Rodrigue, Blue Dog Man, New York, 1999, p. 17) At its core, Rodrigue's Blue Dog is the constant amid an ever culturally shifting world and through its piercing, expressionless face and luminous palette, served as a vessel of projection for the artist.