Musings of an Artist's Wife

As LSU faces Alabama this weekend, a bookworm, in spite of herself, embraces a sports tradition-

I attended a small college, Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. In the mid-1980s we had maybe two thousand students. Although we had a football team, I don’t recall any games. We had a Greek system, but I evaded that as well, opting instead for extra classes and the AIDS suicide hotline.

In short, I received an excellent education in both books and sensitivity but, arguably, missed the college experience.

(New Orleans photographer Dennis Couvillion took this incredible picture during the 2011 football season; be sure and click the photo to enlarge)

In my family, I was the exception. My parents graduated in ’61 and ‘62 from Louisiana State University, and my sister attended Ol’ Miss, followed by graduate school at Florida State. Without question, they were the cool kids, fans of football games, dating and parties, while I brown-nosed my professors and stood waiting early-morning at the locked library door. In the end, we all graduated, meaning, I suppose, that I missed out…needlessly.

For sometime now, George Rodrigue seeks to repair this lapse. It began when he insisted that I attend the 2004 Sugar Bowl in the New Orleans Superdome despite my guilt-motivated speech that my ticket belongs instead with a real fan.

To my surprise, I cheered and cried, losing my voice, but not my enthusiasm, for hours after LSU’s win. If I close my eyes as I write this, I picture the energy of the strangers’ shoulders on either side of me as we walked the length of Poydras Street to the Mississippi River. I knew for the first time this sort of exhilaration and, after losing my mother later that same year, cheered for her going forward, for the Homecoming floats and decorated fraternity houses, for poodle skirts and jukeboxes, for young love and life-long friends and, more than anything, for tradition.

(pictured, photos from my mother's album, 1958; click to enlarge-)

It was the 1957, ’58 and ’59 seasons, the years my parents attended LSU, that changed Louisiana football forever.

In the late 1950s, Billy Cannon (above, photographed by LSU Sports) won the Heisman Trophy, the Tigers won the National Championship, and LSU stadium filled to capacity. About this same time, national television broadcasted NFL games, watched for the first time by large audiences. People saw the Baltimore Colts with Johnny Unitas play the Green Bay Packers, coached by Vince Lombardi.

“When I went to art school in L.A.,” explains George Rodrigue, “the first thing I wanted to see was a national football game live. I saw Johnny Unitas and the Baltimore Colts play the Los Angeles Rams at the L.A. Coliseum. I was shocked to see only 30,000 people in an 110,000-seat stadium. Pro-football still struggled for attendance.”

(pictured, George Rodrigue last week at Tiger Stadium with Bunnie Cannon, Executive Director of Institutional Advancement at LSU, and daughter of famous LSU running back, Billy Cannon)

“Years later,” George continues, “I’m standing in line at Ray Hay’s Cajun Po-Boys in Houston, Texas, and Billy Cannon taps me on the shoulder. Turns out that he’s a fan of my Cajun paintings. I could barely speak. It’s probably the only time in my life that I ever felt star struck.”

Before heading to art school in Los Angeles, George Rodrigue attended USL (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette). Considering his football fever today, it’s ironic that he remembers little of USL football from school, focusing on his drawing exercises more than the Bulldogs (now the Ragin’ Cajuns), a team he follows with enthusiasm today.

Rodrigue sought a formal education in the arts, and before graduating at USL, he hopped on a train to California, where he watched Louisiana football from afar and painted full-time.

For George in those years, tradition was not football. Tradition was the Cajun culture, and, desperate to preserve it, he painted it.

(In Modern Medicine, 1985, above, Rodrigue compares the teamwork put forth by today's Louisiana health care workers to that of a kids' football team, including his sons, André and Jacques; for more paintings from Rodrigue's doctor/hospital series, visit here)

Gradually, George Rodrigue’s college football fever returned, an addiction (a wife’s word) consuming much of his life, even in the face of painting.

(Okay it’s not college football, but you get the idea…)

His son André attended UL (George’s alma mater), and his son Jacques attended LSU. As a result, George’s sense of tradition pulls him both directions, yet still firmly rooted in Louisiana football.

(photographs above from the LSU vs Auburn game, October 2011; be sure and click the crowd shot to enlarge)

In the 1980s he spent ten years supporting UL with paintings of award-winning authors and scholars for the Flora Levy Lecture Series (pictured here), and in 2003 he painted LSU’s mascot, Mike the Tiger.

The more than $1 million in proceeds from Mike’s print helped to replace the tiger’s cage with a habitat, Mike’s home on the LSU grounds today.

-click photos to enlarge-

This year, the LSU Museum of Art held a major Rodrigue exhibition based on paintings from the collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art. Rodrigue took advantage of this situation to once again paint in support of LSU. This time, however, proceeds benefit not only LSU’s programs, but also arts-infused education throughout the state of Louisiana (details here), all coordinated by the Tiger Athletic Foundation and the George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts.

For me, I attend games when summoned or stay home when permitted, serving gumbo or red beans, not only because it pleases my husband, but also because it honors my parents.

(pictured, John Wolfe and Mignon McClanahan at LSU, 1958)

My mother was the first person in her family to attend college. A tradition was born, assumed my grandparents, and as an 18-year old know-it-all, I disappointed them out of the gate, choosing a small south Texas school (that I loved) over the Baton Rouge campus.

Yet this weekend, as LSU takes on Alabama, I’m thinking about tradition as though I high-fived Billy Cannon himself. I’ll cheer at the top of my lungs for players I’ve never met, from a school I never attended, against a team no doubt full of nice people (although, honestly, I’m partial to Auburn over Alabama, thanks to my sister’s in-laws and a wonderful experience at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art earlier this year) – all for a game I hardly understand and for a collection of photographs (some sprinkled throughout this post) that provide a glimpse of my young parents.

Whatever your reason, I urge you:

Cheer loudly – for YOUR team – this weekend.

And hey, Good Luck-

Wendy

-for more photos, history and discussion, please join me on facebook

Recently I challenged George Rodrigue: Pretend I’m a stranger and answer some questions.

“Do you ever get the Blues?”

“No, I really don’t, at least not on my own,” he said. “But I do catch the Blues from others.”

“Like your wife?” I asked. But I already knew the answer.

(pictured, The Red Cover-Up, 2010, acrylic on canvas)

The Blue Dog, ironically, is not about the Blues, at least not for George Rodrigue. Although it began as the frightening loup-garou, for many it’s a happy, positive image representing anything from their pet to New Orleans. Some see universal questions in the dog’s eyes; others see nothing deeper than a cool piece of art.

"Unlike a musician who might need the Blues to sing the Blues, I paint only when I'm happy. The Blues work against my creativity; they don't inspire me."

George Rodrigue sees shape, color and design, endless challenges using a strong form on a blank canvas. He also sees a vehicle to graphically comment on life today --- a refreshing change for an artist who spent years painting the Cajuns and illustrating the past.

(In My Security Blanket, 1996, original silkscreen, Rodrigue combines the iconic American flag with the iconic Blue Dog.)

Although no longer the case, for a few years in the early 1990s, George often related his Blue Dog paintings to his studio dog Tiffany.

“I threw a blanket over her,” I recall him saying, “and she just sat there, peeking out, watching me paint.”

(pictured, You Can Run, but You Can’t Hide From the Blues, 1991, oil on canvas)

The Tiffany-connection was short-lived, however, as George explored deeper meaning within this entity. He faced the fact that, as with the oak tree, he stopped seeing a dog almost from the beginning, focusing instead on composition and graphics, his on-going and principal interest since art school.

(pictured, Hiding from the Moon, 1995, original silkscreen)

This doesn’t mean, however, that he doesn’t play. In Hiding My Blues From You (below), for example, he floats a ghostly pattern of dark eyes behind the dog, highlighting the futility of cloaking one’s sadness. (1995, original silkscreen)

I pushed George again on the Blues, refusing to believe that he never experienced the drama first-hand:

“Okay,” he admitted, “I remember one time thirty-five years ago when I raised my house in Lafayette. I went through so much to pay for it that I had little time to paint. I renovated my house, but I was broke. I only had a few paintings left for sale, and none, not even the Aioli Dinner, were selling.

“I was overwhelmed, and I guess I had the Blues. I remember sitting in my studio in the middle of the night and thinking that all I wanted in life was to make enough money so I could just paint.”

(pictured, George’s raised house on Jefferson Street in Lafayette, Louisiana; notice Tiffany running across the road. For more photos and a related post see “A Gallery of His Own”)

As he spoke, I thought about George’s new French Quarter gallery and the years it took him to reach this point. After twenty years in a small rented space, he opened in both New Orleans and Carmel, California the galleries he always wanted.

(pictured, Rodrigue Gallery Unveiling, 2010, original silkscreen)

“And what about Katrina?” I asked, recalling his mood and his dark series of paintings.

“I knew it was going to take us (the Gulf Coast region) at least five years to even start to come back,” he said, forgetting to pretend that I’m a stranger. “Katrina wasn’t so much the Blues; it was more like someone took a bat and hit me in the head*.”

Wendy

-For more on George’s mood and my Blues following Hurricane Katrina, see the post “For New Orleans” from Gambit’s Blog of New Orleans.

-*This reminds me of George's comment during our artsy visit to Marfa, Texas last year: "This is like I'm gonna get a stick stuck in my eye, and I can't wait to get it, because it's good for me!"

-Also this month: “The Artist’s Mother,” a story about Marie Rodrigue, a woman who affected her son with praise and criticism, featured in November’s Country Roads Magazine, and linked here-

“The brave young men rode onto the beaches and into battle on Higgins Boats, built in New Orleans by Andrew Higgins, the man Eisenhower said, ‘won the war for us.'” —Stephen Ambrose

Yet these two American giants of World War II never met. Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) eventually became President of the United States (1953-1961); however, it was a decade before, in his role as a 5-star general in the United States Army and finally Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, that solidified his status as a hero, leading the United States and its allies to victory in Europe during World War II.

Meanwhile, Andrew Higgins (1886-1952) lived and worked in New Orleans, where he built many types of boats and barges but, most famously, designed the Landing Craft Personnel, Large (LCPL), the boats that transported allied troops to the Normandy beaches on D-Day.

(-Be sure and click the photos to enlarge-)

When the National World War II Museum approached George Rodrigue in 2008 about a Blue Dog painting for their new wing, he winced.

“The Blue Dog,” he noted, “has no connection to World War II.”

Instead, Rodrigue designed a painting unlike any photograph, posing Eisenhower and Higgins together for the first and only time.

He worked on the design in his Carmel, California studio for two months before lifting his paintbrush, using the computer to arrange the elements. Even with this shortcut, he changed the painting by hand several times, whiting out days of work and large sections of paint, including the jeep and the oak tree, which he re-painted with adjustments, sometimes less than an inch, but nevertheless critical to his eye.

In the end, the painting took six months. Too large for Rodrigue’s easel, the canvas remained propped against a wall, where he painted standing, sitting, or lying down.

“This is the most important project of my life,” he told me many nights, as he painted until daylight, at times falling asleep on the studio’s floor.

Once completed and before shipping the large canvas to New Orleans, we invited area friends for an unveiling in our home. Among the guests was a man in his seventies, Didier, visiting with his wife from Lyon, France. With tears in his eyes, he shared his D-Day story.

“I would not be here today if it were not for the Americans,” he said.

He recalled his shock as a child at seeing not only the boats, but also his first jeep. He recalled the kindness of American soldiers and the sweet taste of their Juicy Fruit gum, always accessible from their pockets.

He reminded all of us of the importance of honoring our soldiers for the risks they take for not only our freedom, but also the freedom of others.

I thought of Didier just a few weeks later, in November of 2009, when the National World War II Museum opened its new wing, featuring not only Rodrigue's painting, but also the Solomon Victory Theater, the Stage Door Canteen and Chef John Besh's American Sector. With canes and in wheelchairs, the veterans paraded from the old building to the new, greeted by stars like Tom Hanks, Tom Brokaw and Mickey Rooney, but mostly by ordinary people inspired and awed by their service and patriotism.

I also thought of my father, a Vietnam Veteran, now retired from the United States Air Force. I thought of our National Guard and their welcome presence following Hurricane Katrina. I thought of my cousin just returned from Afghanistan, and of our soldiers now abroad, risking their lives and missing their families.

On Veterans Day, we honor you, the men and women who, throughout history, protect and serve. As Didier observed on that fairytale day in Carmel, California,

“God only knows where we would be without you.”

Wendy

Please join me on facebook for more paintings, photographs and discussion-

This weekend George Rodrigue and I attended an event where the religious leader prayed for and encouraged our suffering. We left watching carefully, unprepared at a gala for this powerful lesson, for the bus that might run us down in the street, safeguarding our empathy with broken bones or worse.

“Suffering and diminishment are not the greatest of evils but are normal ingredients of life,” wrote Cardinal Avery Dulles, just prior to his death in 2008. “As I become increasingly paralyzed and unable to speak, I can identify with the many paralytics and mute persons in the Gospels…”

(Pictured, Rodrigue painted Father Dulles in 1990, one of ten portraits for the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s Flora Levy Lecture Series)

Many doctrines welcome life’s hardships, because they tune us in to the suffering of others, and they make us better people.

“Only the healer, not the healer’s subject, must believe,” explains George Rodrigue, as he describes his aunt, a traiteur, as in the 1974 painting of Doc Moses above. “It’s the same for everyone,” he continues. “We each have the ability to make a difference, but it’s our belief and compassion that make it so.”

To be clear, as a rule George admires doctors and dismisses faith healers; however, he holds a life-long fascination with the power of the mind and the mystery of the universe. Years ago while dating, we split for several months. Upon reconciling, our first conversation involved hours on black holes, The Big Bang Theory, and déjà vu, as though his cosmic thoughts swirled for months and somehow reunited us.

“Give me a few hours to get into the zone, to really believe,” explained George recently, “and I could be someone else. I could be so funny that no one would recognize me. I could be Lewis Grizzard.”

“I don’t have any out-of-body experiences,” wrote Grizzard. “I had indeed seen a bright, beautiful light and had followed it, but it turned out to be a Kmart tire sale.”

Give me a few hours, I thought, and I could slip into insanity. It seems easy, almost like stepping off a mountain or, lest my sister worry, from a sidewalk into the grass, into freedom --- from cynicism, from suffering, from responsibilities, from guilt (both mine and others in all cases).

“Nothing in life is fair,” our mom used to say, followed closely by “I’m sorry girls, but Christmas will be grim this year.”

Heather and I, however, rolled our eyes, because Christmas was never grim. Whether new or used rollerskates, the pompoms (for the skate-toes) were handmade and hot pink (in my case), and the latest or last year’s Kermit or Miss Piggy, the perfect stuffed companion (in my sister’s).

I think often on scenes from my childhood. I recall once sharing a joke from school with my mother and baby sister at the dinner table. Ethiopian jokes were popular at Longwood Elementary School in Shalimar, Florida in the mid-1970s, and I laughed with a mouthful of pot roast, repeating the latest trendy mockery of a starving people.

My mother, who laughs with joy in my memories, wasn’t smiling that day.

“There is nothing funny about another person’s pain,” she said.

But they can’t hear me, Mama; they’re in Africa!

“It doesn’t matter whether they hear you or not, Wendy Anne.”

....and I knew, by the sound of my middle name, that this lesson was very important.

I recall too, as the holidays approach, one Christmas with relatives in New Orleans. I was ten or so and opened my new skates as though surprised, only to hear my cousin’s shriek, as she discovered her new stereo, records, an arcade-size Pac Man video game and more.

“Come see, Wendy,” she shouted, full of love. “I’ll share it all!”

But I ran upstairs and buried my face in the guestroom pillow, ashamed of my jealousy and yet helpless to stop it. I remember the feelings like they were yesterday, not wanting to hurt my mother, who gave us the world. I explained through my tears, as she apologized and stroked my hair, how much I loved my skates and how I never liked Pac Man anyway.

I thought of this, for some reason, last Saturday night when George woke me at 3:00 a.m., pleading that I rub his legs and shoulders --- “full of tension,” he explained, following the LSU vs. Alabama game. Annoyed and half-asleep, I scratched his back for maybe two minutes before dozing off, all the while dumbfounded over the physical and mental trauma following a winning football game watched from a sofa.

Within an hour, I awoke again, this time to the sound of a 2009 season Saints play-off game, “the perfect thing,” he explained, “to calm my nerves.”

I almost insisted that he turn off the television, explained how ridiculous this is in the middle of the night, and reminded him that we faced a full day and had to be up in two hours. Instead, however, I marveled quietly at this man and my life.

Oddly enough and unknown to me, he pondered along the same lines, yet in his unpredictable, unique way. Realizing I watched him, he noted out of the blue, as the Saints kicked the winning field goal against the Minnesota Vikings,

“What people don’t realize is that all of that funny stuff you write is really me!”

Well, now you know-

Wendy

-This self-indulgent dribble is for Jack, who encourages me-

-Also this week, Marie Laveau, Storyville and more in "Reading New Orleans," a new post for Gambit-

-Please join me on facebook for more paintings, photographs and discussion-

In 1950 George Rodrigue drew and colored a turkey for his parents. On the back he wrote in a surprisingly elegant child’s script:

For Mother and Dad on Thanksgiving:

1. Visits to chapel. 9

2. Prayers in school. 40

3. Decades of rosary. 27

George Rodrigue

2^nd Grade

To fit the tiny picture in a frame (or possibly for some other reason), George’s mother folded back the question mark so that it could not be seen, leaving only a turkey staring at a partially hidden and therefore barely discernible ax.

I asked George about the picture. His Isn’t it obvious? expression amused me, as I thought about a six year old boy relating to a doomed and confused turkey, while already questioning the Catholic rote.

“I remember sitting on the porch in my grandmother’s cane chair, rocking in a trance, clicking the rosary beads and mumbling incoherently, as I mimicked Tante ‘Git. If she, the oldest of eleven children, felt this process important, then it must be.”

(pictured, Marie Courrege Rodrigue, seated left, with her brothers and sisters, New Iberia, 1955)

Years later, George Rodrigue remains respectful of both the religion and the tradition. This past weekend at the Catholic funeral of his cousin Donald LaBauve in New Iberia, Louisiana, I whispered during the sermon,

“What do you think of this? The words! The meanings! What does this have to do with Donald?”

George shook his head, his eyes watering.

“Nothing. He’s on a tangent.”

...as the priest explained God’s power to heal the sick and raise the dead.

Donald LaBauve, pictured above, lived to be ninety years old. As George’s Boy Scout troop leader, he was a father figure to the young artist. George Rodrigue, Sr. became ill in 1958 and, according to George, “was never the same.” One of fourteen children, George's father died in 1967, just months following the Thanksgiving photograph below.

As George and I sit down to dinner today with his boys Andre and Jacques, my sister Heather and her family, our dad, and several dear friends, I view this 1960s family scene as an enormous and poignant irony. George views it with a nostalgic melancholy, of days gone by but not necessarily missed.

-click photo to enlarge-

An only child, a young man in his early twenties, recently returned from Los Angeles and art school, sits at a table with his aging parents, a father ill and drifting away, and a mother consumed with her husband's care.

Somewhere in New Iberia, at the time of this photograph, are hundreds of relatives, twenty-three aunts and uncles, plus their spouses, children and grandchildren, none of which George recalls ever sharing a meal, at their table or at his parents’.

“It was a different time,” he explained. “And there were just too many of them.”

So today, on this celebration of Thanksgiving, we are thankful for family, for being together for not only the turkey, rice dressing and pecan pie, but more so the laughter, conversation and love that come with it. George and I wish you the same, raising our glasses to you and yours with “A Toast to Cajun Food.”

Wendy

-For more on George Rodrigue, Sr. and Marie Courrege Rodrigue, see the posts “The Artist’s Father” and “The Artist’s Mother”

-I hope you also enjoy “Dancing the Shrimp,” a story of family, seafood, and Louisiana history in this week’s Gambit’s Blog of New Orleans-

Note: Throughout this post I sprinkled images by Louisiana artists. Some I interviewed and some not, but all are included in the book The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana.* As I wrote, I thought of the text and images as two separate statements, not necessarily related. In other words, unless specifically noted, all artist statements, whether quoted or in general, are anonymous.

Recently I interviewed artists and photographers for essays within an upcoming book* featuring two hundred years of art in Louisiana. Although my participation is minor within this ambitious project published by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, I take this assignment seriously, and I feel responsible for small slices of each legacy.

(pictured, Velma and the Diamond Ring, Francis X. Pavy, 2008; be sure and click photos throughout to enlarge-)

If you ask most non-artists, the artist’s life is an envied one, provided there's food on the table. People often equate the creation of art with leisure, as though meeting a deadline and pleasing a boss (or agent) doesn’t count if one uses talent and personal expression to get there.

What’s more, people often judge artists based on their ability to hold out in the name of art, to resist commercialization, mass production and, in this contemporary world of video and conceptual art, traditional mediums such as modeled clay and paint on canvas.

“My agent is pushing me towards video,” explained one artist. “But it takes so much time, and I don’t know if I have it in me.”

In between his words, I heard his fear as well. I paint a picture over a few days and sell it for $5,000, half of which goes to my agent. After months of work, I’ll have a video that no one will buy.

(pictured, Popular Ladies Social Aid and Pleasure Club, Judy Cooper, 2007)

Artists have bills to pay like everybody else. They also have egos and families and goals. They walk a line between pleasing themselves (the popular mantra) and pleasing the public (the unpopular one). They enjoy public recognition and making money, but they aren’t supposed to admit it.

(“I don’t go after that sort of thing,” replied one artist when I asked her about awards, honors and museum exhibitions).

I heard artists explain away commissioned portraits, wedding photography, and product design, all with carefully worded and practiced lingo in an effort to dissolve my tiresome (and tacky – after all, I should know better) question, along with the age-old stereotypes.

(pictured, A Faster Breed, a painting for the Xerox Collection, George Rodrigue, 2000)

Consistently I heard overlapping stories – the same frustrations regarding exhibition deadlines, out-of-date websites, and limited studio and/or gallery space. Nearly everyone mentioned the problems of offering something affordable to the public without compromising their artistic integrity.

(pictured, Louisiana: The Pelican State, Miranda Lake, 2011)

I was surprised and somewhat relieved to learn of other similarities as well, namely the widespread and accepted computer use, along with a steady interest in printmaking as an art form. A few artists mentioned the convenience of the computer and the affordability of the prints, but nearly everyone talked of the computer as a tool, as a way to improve and edit their photographs, design compositions for their paintings or prints, and experiment with end-results before picking up their paintbrush.

(George Rodrigue designed his painting Victory on Bayou St. John, 2009, above, using the computer, detailed here)

In addition, nearly everyone within the arts overlaps in their interests, creating a strange inability to define work versus hobby. Painters take photographs; photographers play music; sculptors make movies; and so forth.

I noted also the solitude of these telephone interviews. In each case, the artist sat within their studio, putting down the brush or camera to answer my questions. I knew as we spoke that I interrupted their work, their creative train of thought, and I wondered if, in doing so, I inadvertently altered their next stroke.

(pictured, Pink Bunny, Hunt Slonem, 2011)

But then I thought of George at his easel, whether quiet and in the middle of the night (as he prefers), or chaotic with interruptions in the afternoon (as he expects). Either way, he moves in his own purposeful direction, influenced by life and people, but not by trends or the ideas of others. Is it work? I guess that depends on how one defines work.

If you’re one of the lucky few, you make money by doing that thing you enjoy the most, whether tending bar, running a computer company, or creating art. This isn’t the sort of thing one eyes with retirement* in mind. George would say that it’s not working; rather, it’s living.

(pictured, Eudora Welty, Philip Gould, 1992)

In the end, whether the rest of us call it work or not, no one’s going to do it for them. The artist lives a lonely, or at least an alone, if not solitary, life. Every artist talks about new ideas and avoids complacency, all personal versions of George’s mantra, “I have to keep the work exciting for me.”

Wendy

*George’s mother died at age 103 still waiting for him to get a real job…. “with the telephone company,” she used to say. Read the story here-

--Over the next several months, I’ll publish versions of these essays on-line with Gambit. This week, for example, I posted a story, linked here, about Lafayette photographer Philip Gould, coinciding with his exhibition, “Louisiana Landscape and Grass Roots” (LeMieux Galleries through 12/30/11) and his recent collaboration with historian Carl Brasseaux, Acadiana: Louisiana’s Historic Cajun Country, a book published by LSU Press, 2011

--The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana is a project edited by Michael Sartisky, Ph.D., President/Executive Director of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities and J. Richard Gruber, Ph.D., Founding Director of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, scheduled for publication in April 2012 in celebration of the 200^th anniversary of Louisiana’s statehood. In addition, all essays appear on the website KnowLA: the Digital Encyclopedia of Louisiana History and Culture

Note: Based on an essay scheduled for publication in an upcoming book* celebrating Louisiana’s bicentennial, published in April 2012 by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, this blog version includes added images, as well as links throughout, referring you to specific relevant posts and websites.

Born and raised in New Iberia, Louisiana, George Rodrigue (b. 1944) determined his future in art while sick with polio as a child. His mother brought him paint-by-numbers, a 1950s invention, to ease his boredom. Eight year-old Rodrigue used the paints and canvases, however, to paint not the suggested country lanes and Last Suppers, but rather fire trucks, monsters, and alligators. Following a full recovery, he set his course on art and never wavered.

Seeking a formal art education, Rodrigue enrolled in 1962 at the University of Southwest Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette), where he studied Abstract Expressionism. It was his project for Professor Calvin Harlan’s design class that proved most useful when he applied to art school. His design book secured his acceptance to the prestigious Art Center College of Design (then located in Los Angeles; now in Pasadena), where Rodrigue studied not only the fundamentals of art such as figure drawing, but also graphic design, illustration, automotive design, and photography. Most important, at Art Center Rodrigue studied for the first time with working artists, significantly Lorser Feitelson, the master of Hard Edge Painting.

(pictured, Pop Goes the Ads, a mixed media by Rodrigue, 1966 - click photo to enlarge-)

In California (1963-1967) Rodrigue also admired Pop Art when Andy Warhol premiered his Campbell’s Soup Cans at the Ferus Gallery. Furthermore, the literal and figurative distance from south Louisiana influenced the young artist, who worried that his unique Cajun culture faded within a modern world of television and travel. Unlike his Art Center classmates, who pursued careers in the art capital, New York City, Rodrigue returned home, using the hard edge and pop influences of California to paint the landscape and people of Louisiana. Ultimately Rodrigue graphically interpreted his culture, coining a new phrase, “Cajun Artist.”

(pictured, Aioli Dinner by George Rodrigue, 1971, Collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art)

In 1974 Rodrigue won an Honorable Mention for his painting The Class of Marie Courrege at the historic Le Salon des Artistes in Paris, prompting a review from the French newspaper, Le Figaro, which dubbed him “America’s Rousseau.” And in 1976 he wrote the first national publication on the Cajun culture, The Cajuns of George Rodrigue (Oxmoor House). The National Endowment for the Arts gifted the book to Rosalind Carter, who chose it as an official White House Gift of State during the Carter Administration.

Rodrigue first painted what would become his most famous image, the Blue Dog, in 1984, imagined for a collection of ghost stories. The book Bayou (Chris Segura, Inkwell Press) included forty Louisiana tales, including the loup-garou, a werewolf or ghost dog said to lurk in cemeteries and sugar cane fields. As a boy, Rodrigue’s mother warned him, “If you’re not good today, the loup-garou will eat you tonight!”

(pictured, Watchdog, 1984, the first Blue Dog painting)

The artist invented a red-eyed, frightening image loosely based on photographs of his deceased studio dog, Tiffany. He painted the loup-garou at night under a blue-moon sky, casting a blue-grey shade on the dog’s fur.

Over the following ten years, the loup-garou developed into the iconic Blue Dog, an image that catapulted Rodrigue’s fame worldwide. In 1992 the Wall Street Journal featured Rodrigue and his Blue Dog with an article on its front page, and in 1993 he joined artists such as Andy Warhol and Keith Haring in creating art for the international Absolut Art campaign.

(pictured, Absolut Rodrigue, 1993; related post "Blue Dog: Out of Control, 1993-1995")

In addition to numerous group shows, Rodrigue’s museum presence includes solo exhibitions in New Orleans, Atlanta, Chicago, Memphis, and Pensacola. In 2012 the Amarillo Museum of Art hosts a blockbuster Rodrigue exhibition, followed by Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna Art Museum and the National Steinbeck Center (Salinas, California) in 2013.

Following more than $3 million raised for humanitarian and arts organizations in the wake of September 11^th, 2001 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Rodrigue established in 2009 the George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts, encouraging the use of art within all school curriculums and funding scholarships, classroom art supplies, and a variety of art educational programs.

In 2006 Rodrigue received the Lifetime Achievement Arts Award from the State of Louisiana Governor’s Office, soon after appointed the state’s official Artist Laureate; and in 2009 the University of Louisiana at Lafayette presented him with an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts. In 2011 the Center for Louisiana Studies awarded him with the James William Rivers Prize, established “to honor persons who have contributed or rendered, recently or over the course of their careers, outstanding scholarly study, work, or teaching about the culture, history, ….and art of Louisiana or about its people.” Also in 2011 the National Boy Scouts of America presented the artist with their highest honor, the Distinguished Eagle Award.

Today Rodrigue divides his time between New Orleans and Carmel, California. For more by George Rodrigue, visit his website: www.georgerodrigue.com

Wendy

-Also this week, I hope you enjoy Judy Cooper, New Orleans Photographer, a new story for Gambit

*This essay also appears on the website KnowLA: the Digital Encyclopedia of Louisiana History and Culture and within the upcoming book The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana, a project edited by Michael Sartisky, Ph.D., President/Executive Director of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities and J. Richard Gruber, Ph.D., Founding Director of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, scheduled for publication in April 2012 in celebration of the 200th anniversary of Louisiana’s statehood

Suggested Reading:

The Art of George Rodrigue. Ginger Danto (Introduction), Michael Lewis (Preface). Published by Harry N. Abrams, New York, 2003

Blue Dog Man. George Rodrigue, David McAninch. Published by Stewart, Tabori & Chang, New York, 1999

The Cajuns of George Rodrigue. Paintings and Text by George Rodrigue. Published by Oxmoor House, Birmingham, Alabama, 1976

George Rodrigue Prints: A Catalogue Raisonne 1970-2007. E. John Bullard (Foreword), Wendy Wolfe Rodrigue (Introduction). Published by Harry N. Abrams, New York, 2008

So this is Christmas

And what have you done

Another year over

And a new one just begun*

I wandered through college with a guilt complex. Like many naïve students, inspired by a voting voice and new knowledge, I embraced the world’s problems as my own, determined to improve things somehow, even as I failed in family relationships and winced at dateless Saturday nights.

Looking back, it was a crazed mental time, when a skipped meal, prayed over, transported magically to a starving child; when vegetarianism meant one less chicken in the over-crowded coop; and when five spare dollars in my checking account meant more money that Sunday in the offering plate.

I saw need everywhere, a vision I gradually narrowed, or at least focused, lest I went crazy. Although some of us remain protesters and activists as we age, most concentrate at some point on peace within our own home as opposed to peace on earth. Despite this age-accompanying cynicism, I still believe that one person’s actions make a difference, and that even a small difference counts.

Children see the world with broad vision. They love and give without worrying about perception. “We’re all artists, Ms. Wendy,” explained a young girl recently, as I complimented her on her painting.

Children also see beauty where adults might miss it. “If you stand here,” said a child, as she held my hand in the Besthoff Sculpture Garden, “the light shines from underneath the trees, just like in Mr. George’s paintings.”

(pictured, The Tree Where I Sat, 2009, 24x30, oil on canvas)

I was a sophomore at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas when I met Gladys at the H.E.B. She struggled with her cane and over-sized handbag as she loaded her groceries into the trunk of a cab while the driver sat helpless, rolling his eyes with impatience.

“Where do you live?” I asked.

“Alamo Heights,”

...she replied, referring to the old and, were this New Orleans, ‘uptown’ nearby neighborhood.

She trusted me, and I gave her a ride to a Tudor-style house, classic and cracking on the outside, decaying and 1950s within.

I recognized the old-lady smell, the one that comes from piles of junk mail and dusty lace tablecloths, from floral hand cream and moldy wallpaper, from warmed leftovers and stale coffee. Except for a tic-toc, the house was deadly quiet, as though no one disturbed its air with laughter or speech in years.

Gladys looked like Miss Havisham, and her home, although not quite Satis House, sat neglected and lonely. We made a date.

(pictured, The Shadows of New Iberia, 1969, 16x20, oil on canvas)

That Friday, I fetched Gladys for lunch. She wore her vintage Sunday best to the Mexican cantina (paid for with an advance from my job at the school auditorium) and afterwards served me tea from her floral Windsor china, as we made small talk on a plastic-covered faded blue sofa.

As I recall those days, it’s the silence that screams loudest in my memories, broken only by the metered sound of the old clock and Gladys’s hesitant answers to my predictable questions:

Tell me about your husband. What is the name of this china pattern? Shall I refill your tea?

We repeated this visit every Friday for more than a year, eventually expanding our afternoons to include museums, the Alamo, and Olmos Pharmacy (for chocolate malts). Along with my peer tutor class, we decorated a Christmas tree, her first in many years. Holiday music filled the house from a student’s boom box.

(pictured, Tree Topper, 2000, 20x16, silkscreen)

In January of my junior year, I joined a study-abroad program in Vienna, Austria. Gladys protested, but I left her anyway, and two months later she died.

The following year I returned from Europe, changed but still -- perhaps more -- guilty. The modern world seemed incongruous with my intense journey through Art History. Without Gladys, I sought diversions. I volunteered at the local A.I.D.S. clinic. One by one, scared young men (because honestly – they were all scared young men) dropped in for testing. Within weeks I answered the A.I.D.S. suicide hotline, forwarded to my college apartment’s phone on Monday nights.

I was an unqualified, healthy, heterosexual twenty-one year old girl. But it was the 1980s, and young gay men died faster than counselors were trained. People feared the infection, and volunteers were scarce. My mother worried, correctly and on several levels, that I didn’t know what I was doing. But this was my protest, my creed, and in my mind, I had no choice.

We all remember when we were young and set out to change the world. Maybe you held a picket sign, chained yourself to a tree, or delivered Meals on Wheels. Maybe you still look at the world in this way, out to make a difference.

My sister and I learned this vision from our mother. Despite barely covering the weekend’s hot checks with Monday’s paycheck, she sent money every month, along with our letters, to Ernik Tukiman in Indonesia, a child matched to our family by World Vision.

(Thirty-five years later, Ernik’s photograph still hangs on our Christmas tree).

I asked George Rodrigue about those years in his own life, and his answer surprised me:

“All I wanted was to get to art school.”

His focus paid off, and he fulfilled that dream and more, supporting his family with his art by his mid-twenties. George’s generosity of time and money kicked in later, first in small ways in his Lafayette community, and later with large-scale projects for the Boy Scouts of America, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, the Red Cross following 9/11, the International Child Art Foundation, humanitarian and arts-related relief following Hurricane Katrina, and countless small-town projects involving festival posters, student lectures and more.

Today, through the George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts (GRFA), these efforts are near full-time, with programs devoted to the arts and education.

At one point, we all realize that the joy of giving cannot match the weight of need. Even through GRFA, it is impossible for George to reach every school, anymore than I could befriend every lonely old lady, or my mother feed every child. But does it mean we shouldn’t try?

And so this is Christmas

I hope you have fun

The near and the dear one

The old and the young*

Wishing you and yours a joyous, giving holiday-

Wendy

*John Lennon and Yoko Ono, "Happy Christmas (War is Over)," 1971

-for more paintings, photographs, and discussion, please join me on facebook

George Rodrigue and I spent much of the past eighteen months on the road visiting museums and communities for exhibitions, lectures, and education events coordinated by the George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts (GRFA) and the New Orleans Museum of Art, which organized the tour as part of its 100th birthday celebration.

Locations included Baton Rouge (pictured above, during a painting and cooking demo with Chef Paul Prudhomme), Lake Charles, Slidell, Shreveport, Alexandria, Monroe, Auburn University, Little Rock, and the Florida Panhandle. (click any of these cities for the story and photos from that event).

The tour made for a rewarding year, as we raised money and awareness for arts education, the focus of George’s foundation. In Louisiana, these efforts strengthened the success of GRFA’s annual art contest, now in its third year. In addition to scholarship money, this year’s first place winner, announced next month, works with George Rodrigue on the Official Bicentennial Poster, celebrating the two hundredth birthday of Louisiana’s statehood.

Last summer we opened the GRFA Education Center on Magazine Street in New Orleans and participated in our first White Linen Night (story here), followed by Dirty Linen Night the following week in the French Quarter, events we’ve missed in the past while in California.

In addition, George Rodrigue received in 2011 the Distinguished Eagle Award from the National Boy Scouts of America (story here) and the James William Rivers Prize from the Center for Louisiana Studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. His Number One Tiger Fan raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the LSU Museum of Art, the Tiger Athletic Foundation, and the George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts.

For George Rodrigue, these programs and exhibitions left him with little time to paint. We spent just a brief few weeks at his Carmel studio, so that in one year he created only a handful of paintings, most in New Orleans in between openings. He also painted during more than a dozen public demonstrations, when he worked quickly and with large brushes before an audience, such as the examples pictured at the top of this post.

(Most of Rodrigue's 2011 studio paintings are enormous in scale, such as At the Head of the Red River, 48x72, pictured below; see more here)

In late 2011, however, he completed a one-year project, Swamp Dogs, a series of six large-scale prints on chrome. (Pictured below, Swamp Dogs Series #1, 48x58 inches; I’ll detail the complete series in a blog post later this month)

-click the photo to enlarge-

I spent 2011 recording our travels and sharing in depth studies of George’s art (see the categories to the right of this post). I also marked one year of writing for the New Orleans newspaper Gambit Weekly and began a new blogging project for Country Roads Magazine, as well as contributing essays on numerous Louisiana artists to the book The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana (published April 2012) and KnowLA: The Digital Encyclopedia of Louisiana History and Culture, projects sponsored by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.

Although I enjoyed writing, the news was not always welcome. If we lump the artist-losses together, 2011 could be like the day the music died, but for art. In August I wrote for Gambit about my favorite, Lucian Freud (1922-2011), whose 2005 Venice exhibition entranced me for days, as I wandered alone or dragging George, my obsession and questions trying his patience.

In December we lost John Chamberlain (1927-2011), the great contemporary sculptor whose work, as pictured above with George Rodrigue and Houston collector Don Sanders, was nothing more than crushed cars to some, while a brilliant statement of Minimalism to others. -click photo to enlarge

The art world mourned Helen Frankenthaler and Cy Twombly, both 1928-2011, American Abstract Expressionist painters heralding from within the worlds of Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) and Robert Motherwell (1915-1991). I thought about blogging on these artists but changed my mind when I read New Orleans artist Mallory Page’s succinct statement:

“I hope somewhere in their last days they sent out a spirit passing the torch to a new generation to bloom; and I hope, somewhere, some of that breeze hits me.”

(pictured, a painting by New Orleans artist Mallory Page; click photo to enlarge)

Page’s thoughts transition nicely into the New Year – not only for her – but also for George Rodrigue, who plans five months at his easel, creating with a time and mental dedication unavailable to him since series such as Bodies and Hurricanes. In other words, expect surprises in 2012.

His plans also include paintings for upcoming exhibitions at the Amarillo Museum of Art (opening August 2012) and the National Steinbeck Center (opening Fall 2013).

Most thrilling, we’ll hit the road in our truck, resuming our annual cross-country drives,* this time incorporating three weeks in April exploring the state of Texas. I look forward to sharing our adventures and George’s paintings with you throughout the year at Musings of an Artist’s Wife, Gambit Weekly, Country Roads Magazine, Facebook and Twitter.

Many thanks, as always, for reading. Happy New Year to all!

Wendy

*for a few of our favorite past adventures from the road, including Texas, New Mexico, New York and more, see the links under “RODRIGUE ON THE ROAD,” listed to the right of this story

--George sends a big ‘hello’ to Antonia Valpredo (pictured below) of Luigi’s – a highlight from our Bakersfield New Years Eve -- where he drew an alligator on the restaurant's famous bread, ala Galatoire's (for the Galatoire's story and painted bread from the famous New Orleans restaurant, see the tail end of the post "The Sketchbook")

More than a year in the making, George Rodrigue’s Swamp Dogs combine print, photography and varnish on large sheets of metal, resulting in a unique perspective of the Louisiana landscape.

Beyond materials, however, the series originates with two stories. Rodrigue, a Cajun artist for forty-five years, illustrates Louisiana lore including not only the loup-garou, but also, in this case, allusions to the feux follets, or swamp gas.

-click photos to enlarge-

“It comes from the earth and explodes at night into large balls of fire,” explains Rodrigue. “The Cajuns thought it was something magical – a swamp mystery they couldn’t explain – when actually it was natural gas ignited by static electricity.”

The loup-garou legend, the origin of Rodrigue’s Blue Dog, talks of a crazy wolf-type animal living in the swamp.

“With Swamp Dogs, I combine these mysteries, the loup-garou and the feux follets.”

Before releasing the series last month, Rodrigue experimented for more than a year, both in paint and photography, ultimately combining the two mediums within his computer.

“In the minds of the Cajuns, the feux follets was magic, but real, just as the loup-garou was mythical, but true. To inject reality, I started with my photographs of the Atchafalaya Basin and altered them, stretching shapes and changing colors. The loup-garou is in the water, through the water, and part of the water.”

Using computer technology, Rodrigue combines his imagination with reality. He painted several versions of the Blue Dog, scanned them into the computer, over-laying them onto his altered photographs. He manipulated these computer collages, increasing saturation but reducing the colors to only five or six, lending varying levels of transparency.

“I blended the photographs and painted imagery onto metal surfaces, using archival ink on aluminum so that parts of the metal show through, such as the dog’s nose and areas of the swamp. They appear as raw metal, as does a two-inch border around the final artwork.”

Finally, Rodrigue focuses on scale, with an average size of 3x5 feet.

“The larger the scale, the more stretched the photograph. The metal becomes more obvious, as does the color enhancement.”

At this time, Swamp Dogs includes six versions, each an edition of 10, all pictured within this post and on view at Rodrigue’s galleries. The computer screen does them little justice ……an irony, considering the artwork’s digital origins. I encourage you to view these exquisite, unique works in person.

Wendy

-read about the first annual George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts Digital Art Contest here

-new for Gambit Weekly, in honor of Louisiana’s Bicentennial, I hope you enjoy the following essays:

“The Creole Gourmet Society,” featuring George Rodrigue’s paintings of early 20th century dinner clubs, and “Cora’s Restaurant,” a look back at CODOFIL and our French heritage, including Rodrigue’s classic painting He-bert, Yes – A Bear, No

"It is a dangerous business going out your front door."*

This morning I watched from my desk in Carmel Valley, California as a great-horned owl took a bath. It glanced at me, assessed the danger, and then continued, even as I eased open the glass door and stepped into the rain, camera ready.

We all know that the greatest chance for joy and inspiration comes with the greatest risk of pain. It’s the reason we stay in a ‘dangerous’ city, New Orleans; it’s the reason we argue the murder-rate and dismiss dramatic press; it’s the reason we stare dumbfounded at anyone suggesting, following 2005, that we leave or, worse, let it go. (For a related post, see "For New Orleans")

(This year I'm over-the-moon excited to ride on the giant shoe, Float #1, of the Muses Parade, February 16th; photo by Tabitha Soren)

On the plane last month from New Orleans to the Monterey Peninsula, I thought, as I do on every flight, about artist Georgia O’Keeffe looking down on the clouds, inspired to paint the experience. I thought of my grandmother Helen McClanahan and her hours of 1950s videotaped sky, taken through the airplane window as she puddle-jumped from New Orleans to Lafayette to Houston to Fort Worth. And I checked my superstitions and fear, replacing any form of the word “death” in my book with any form of the word “life,” as I replayed in my head a line I heard years ago on a TV show I can’t recall:

The most important thing holding this machine in the sky is the combined will of the passengers.

O’Keeffe was a brave woman, making art in a man’s world, resettling alone in the New Mexico desert.

(pictured, a photograph from our collection hangs in my Carmel office, Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz by Arnold Newman 1944)

My grandmother (pictured below as Grand Matron of the Order of the Eastern Star) was also a brave woman, traveling alone in the 1950s and 1960s far beyond New Orleans and Fort Worth to Singapore, Thailand, Africa and India.

We choose our dangers and balance risks against rewards. I recall the waiver we signed several years ago, as George and I rafted the Grand Canyon with friends:

You understand that you might die on this trip.

By day two our terror of the ten-rated rapids morphed into elation, as we hooked our arms through the trampoline’s ropes and plunged into the freezing water, pulled off balance by rocks and a raging current. We hiked, climbing straight up in the 110-degree heat, to waterfalls and Anasazi drawings. At one point, four days in and now fearless, I swam (blind, lest I lose my glasses) through a deep pond to a mossy cave, where I scrambled like Gollum from Lord of the Rings to an opening thirty feet above. Standing at the cave’s window, I stared across the water at my fuzzy friends, cheering me on and reminding me to clear the rocks below.

For the first time since my childhood, I held my nose, leaping, falling, sinking, choking, laughing …. and living.

(See photos of the great-horned owl splashing in our pool this morning here-)

What’s the biggest risk you ever took? I asked George Rodrigue, who skipped that Grand Canyon leap.

I assumed his answer involved the train from New Iberia to Los Angeles, calling himself ‘Cajun’ when Cajun wasn’t cool, or painting a Blue Dog when everyone (from the art world to his personal world) questioned his sanity.

Instead he replied, without hesitating,

“Marrying you.”

Wendy

*“It is a dangerous business going out your front door,” wrote J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973)

-for more photos of George Rodrigue this week at his easel, please join me on facebook

-for more by Wendy Rodrigue, visit Gambit Weekly, linked here

It’s impossible to live in the Gulf South and ignore Mardi Gras. It spreads from Galveston to the Florida Panhandle, affecting our judgment, so that ‘normal’ becomes beads, wigs, costumes and masks.

(pictured, Four for Mardi Gras, 2012, 24x38 inches, edition 190)

In New Orleans we expect parade traffic most evenings and all weekends, shrugging our shoulders, ditching our cars, and missing whatever obligations we set out to make, standing instead on the neutral ground* and shouting,

“Throw me something, Mister!”

…or, in the case of the all-female Muses parade,

“Throw me something, Sister!”

Like me, George Rodrigue grew up with Mardi Gras. His mother dressed him in costume for the country parades and balls. He’s been king or grand marshal of various krewes* from Lafayette to New Orleans to Washington D.C., where 5,000 Louisiana residents gather annually for a three-day Mardi Gras extravaganza. (related post here)

(pictured, George Rodrigue with his cousin Arlene, dressed for Mardi Gras in New Iberia, Louisiana, 1949)

For the past ten years, my sister Heather and I ride in the Krewe of Muses parade. This year, for the first time, we ride on the coveted Float Number One! Not only do we have the honor of greeting the crowds at the head of this magnificent and popular parade, but also we vary in head gear from the other Muses floats.

(Our wigs, custom-made by Fifi Mahony’s, sit on display in our living room on the heads of Jeff Koons’s famous Puppy and George Rodrigue’s tribute, a junk shop sculpture he painted blue)

This week, after purchasing our wigs, Heather and I, wearing dresses and heels, strolled down Royal Street for the fun of it. Used to anything on the streets of New Orleans, most people passed us with barely a glance, our confidence contributing to our normalcy. One comment, however, stands out:

“You guys look great!”

...exclaimed a well-dressed gentleman, confirming our drag queen suspicions. At 5’10” without the wigs, Heather and I tower at about 6’5” in our heels and hair.

“I can’t believe he missed our curves,”

...mumbled Heather, as I smiled and hollered “Thank you” towards our admirer.

Mardi Gras runs in our blood. Our mother, Mignon McClanahan Wolfe, reigned as Queen of the Fort Walton Beach Mardi Gras in 1993-4. Along with her wedding day, she spoke of it as the best day of her life, an occasion she prepared for over the course of a year, seeking the right dress and shoes, decorating the stage, and practicing her dance routine, as she boogied in the ballroom of the Okaloosa Island Ramada Inn.

Admittedly, George and I have slowed a bit in our Mardi Gras enthusiasm, unable to sustain the non-stop weeks of parades and parties while fulfilling other obligations. We still attend the Washington D.C. festivities; we occasionally ride on the Blue Dog float in the Argus parade; we dress in formal attire and drag our cooler into the Superdome for the Endymion Extravaganza; and (our favorite), we stand in our Faubourg Marigny window watching the Krewe du Vieux.

This year, at the request of the Sheraton Hotel, George decorated a slice of Canal Street. (click photo to enlarge)

Over the coming weeks, I’ll post stories of our Mardi Gras adventures and trace, in words and pictures, George Rodrigue’s years as King. I hope you'll stay tuned...

And Happy Mardi Gras!

Wendy

*'neutral ground': New Orleans-speak for 'median'

*'krewe': Mardi Gras-speak for 'club'

-I hope you also enjoy “Remembering Etta James and More,” my latest story for Gambit Weekly, linked here

-for more Rodrigue Mardi Gras images, see the post "Mardi Gras Silkscreens: A History," linked here

“Creating art in a childlike manner means to be simple and direct, resulting in immediate imagery.” –George Rodrigue

Since founding the George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts (GRFA) in 2009, George Rodrigue has visited dozens of schools and thousands of children across Louisiana, Northwest Florida and Little Rock, Arkansas.* Through GRFA he fulfills his need to contribute to his community within the arts and education, words scarcely combined in his own childhood in 1950s New Iberia.

This week we visited Martin Behrman Charter School in Algiers, a city on the West bank of New Orleans. Following a drawing lesson in Behrman's historic auditorium, the 4^th grade students painted pink snakes, striped lions, and polka-dot birds with George Rodrigue. In addition, through George's Art Closet, the class received a year's worth of art supplies.

(Susan Poag of The Times-Picayune filmed a wonderful video of George Rodrigue painting with students at Behrman. I'm having trouble embedding it, so in the meantime, click here for the link-)

For the older students, this week we launched our first annual Digital Art Contest with a reception in the George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts Education Center. Louisiana high school students submit 3-D renderings, competing for $15,000 in scholarships, awarded during a luncheon this summer honoring the winners.

"Today’s art students embrace technology as an artistic tool and pursue careers accordingly,” writes George Rodrigue. “Three-D models in movies such as Toy Story and within video games such as World of Warcraft reach millions of people and affect our world.”

Rodrigue recognizes the significance of technology in the arts for this computer generation:

“I challenge educators and business leaders to join GRFA in embracing the digital arts as a viable industry for Louisiana and an important addition to our state’s educational programming."

(click photo to enlarge: GRFA Executive Director Jacques Rodrigue explains the Digital Art Contest during its launch at the foundation’s education center, 747 Magazine Street, New Orleans)

Along these lines, this weekend (February 4, 2012) we award our top fifteen finalists each their share of $50,000 in scholarship money for their winning entries in our annual art contest. This traditional competition honors Louisiana students for their paintings, drawings, collages and photographs based on this year’s theme “Louisiana’s Bicentennial.”

(pictured, a collage of the finalists’ artworks; for a better look, click photo to enlarge, or click here for individual entries-)

Hundreds of students from across the state submitted their artistic celebration of two hundred years of Louisiana’s statehood. The top winner designs the official Louisiana Bicentennial Poster, representing our state throughout this important year.

With his foundation, George Rodrigue encourages the arts in all areas of education, even as state and federal funding wane thinner by the day. Through the generosity of several corporations, organizations, and GRFA’s founding members, along with a successful Print Donation Program, he watches his dream become a reality, as children remain inspired by the arts in school, just as he remains inspired by the arts in life.

(pictured, The Dog Within, 1995, 40x30, acrylic on canvas)

It was Pablo Picasso who said, famously,

“It took me a whole lifetime to learn how to draw like a child again.”

And it was Jackson Pollock who rediscovered this same sincere, play-like approach at a young age, thirty-five:

“On the floor, I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more a part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting.”*

Looks like fun to me-

Wendy

-Pictured above: Rodrigue ‘drips’ ala Pollock; see “Jackson Pollock at 100,” my latest story for Gambit Weekly, linked here-

-Learn more about the George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts here-

*See the links under "GIVING BACK" to the right of this post-

*Pollock quote from The Shock of the New by Robert Hughes, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1996, p. 313

If ever there was a reason for lasik…, I thought to myself as I struggled with my glasses, barely touching my nose over enormous feathered hot pink eyelashes and a mandatory mask, all negotiated around a plunger-like stocking cap and a bouffant Big Bird-yellow Fifi Mahony’s custom-designed wig.

(George Rodrigue designed t-shirts as a gift for everyone on our float. They feature the famous Blue Dog with the famous Muses Shoe. He also took this photograph of me and my sister Heather, backed by his huge painting Shu-fly, a Blue Dog with butterfly wings painted for a Neiman Marcus window in 1999)

For more than twelve hours my head gathered heat and suspended reality as I posed for pictures, danced and sang with hundreds of costumed Muses, and tossed beads, shoes and blinky trinkets from a papier mache float. It was exhausting, expensive, and, to some, flippantly insane. It was, as my nephews would say, totally awesome.

-pictured, the Muses pre-party at the Contemporary Arts Center; click photo to enlarge-

I join thousands of other float riders and parade goers in loving Mardi Gras. Throughout the ride and for weeks preceding, we warn each other, relentlessly:

Pace.

We nap when we can between work, parades and formal balls. We practice yoga and pilates in small, basically ineffectual spurts. We take mini-rests on the parade route as the floats pause for any number of rumored reasons. And we solicit help from our friends, as we juggle work, family, and other commitments.

In my case, my friends loaded my beads (during a thunderstorm, no less) and shared their decorated shoes. We fluffed each other’s wigs, applied glitter and eye make-up, and monitored the port-o-potty door. Somehow, for a few weeks each year, it all seems terribly important.

“Promise me,” I begged Tiffa, who reminded me in her wig of Madame Defarge* as she bartended from an overturned bucket, “that no matter how intently I eye your vodka-cranberry, your answer remains, ‘We’re out.’”

(At Heather’s suggestion, Tiffa is adding a stuffed crow to next year’s coif)

In New Orleans, instead of complaining about parade traffic, we shrug our shoulders, ditch our cars, and throw our hands in the air:

Throw Me Something, Sister!, screamed the crowds last night during the Krewe of Muses all-female parade. “They’re calling your name, Wendy,” said my sister more than once, as we realized the power of social media and the decreasing anonymity of a mask.

Perspective and priorities shift at Mardi Gras, as further evidenced by our parade day lunch: four over-dressed ladies forgoing the usual salads (dressing on the side) in favor of Emeril’s Who Dat Burgers with fries.

“Extra cheese, please,” said my sister.

“More ketchup,” chimed the ladies in chorus.

(While we await our gourmet burgers, Tiffa applies liquid gold glitter to my eyebrows)

(Juli Juneau reacts to the bugs on her headpiece, a uniform requirement on the ROACH float, a pun on the handbag label COACH, relating to this year’s parade theme “Muses Goes Shopping”)

Although I’ve ridden with Muses for years, this was my first time on Float Number One. Unlike the themed floats behind us, we donned our own wigs and made up a few of our own rules.

“Always trade a shoe for champagne,” explained Tiffa, as I hesitated at an offer.

“But only good champagne,” clarified Pam, as she rejected the sickly sweet pink bubbles.

(Note to crowd: worse than cheap champagne are the following – 1) Foul language: “Throw me a f-ing shoe” NEVER works, and 2) Bare male torsos, as in the crowd shot above; good grief Guys, keep your shirts on.)

On Float #1, for the first time in a Mardi Gras parade, I felt real pressure to please. We faced thousands of people, most without adornment, all screaming for shoes and beads and blinky rings.

“Pace, Girls!” shouted Tiffa. “There are twenty-five floats behind you!,” as Heather and I attempted to satisfy every child with a stuffed animal and every old lady with a shoe bracelet. We’re near eye-level with the crowd on this float, as opposed to our usual spot high overhead. “Don’t make eye contact,” warned Tiffa each time the float paused.

Also on Float #1, we experienced for the first time the real beauty of the parade. We saw the flambeaux carriers as they lit their enormous torches. We wondered at the giant lighted butterflies. And we danced for six hours on the route to the beat of the O. Perry Walker High School Marching Band, following close behind us.

At times we lulled, but our adrenalin (and the hamburger) kicked in, and we marveled at our evening, embracing it full force, amidst historic buildings and magnificent oaks, and the heart of New Orleans – its people.

“Vodka and cranberry?” asked Tiffa, forgetting herself as we approached Lee Circle.

Oh, what the heck-

Wendy

*also this week, I hope you enjoy the WAFB-TV interview "The Other Half," when I talk about life with my better half, George Rodrigue; linked here-

*most photographs in this post by Heather Wolfe Parker-

*Madame Defarge is a character in Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities-

George Rodrigue makes a great King. I hear it every year as we attend the Washington D.C. Mardi Gras, where he ruled in 1994 and still commands regal respect.

(pictured, It’s Good to be the King, 1994, acrylic on canvas)

This royal interest started in his childhood, in the late 1940s. George’s first memory, in fact, is a fitting for his King costume during New Iberia’s Carnival.

“Growing up, we never called it Mardi Gras,” he explains. “We called it Carnival…and especially ‘Carnival Balls.’

George’s mother and his older cousin Lillian made costumes, working on them all year. They entered George and Lillian’s daughter Arlene in the children’s carnival costume competition, which the kids won annually.

Did you like it? I asked.

“I didn’t have a choice!” he exclaimed.

At age four or five, they dressed George as Robert Fulton (1765-1815), inventor of the steamboat.

“I remember the parade, because I rode in a mini steamboat car, pulled by two kids on foot. Beneath my legs was a bar with a rope attached, which I pulled throughout the parade, making the paddlewheels turn. It took two hands, which I hated, because I couldn’t wave to the crowd.”

At age ten, George was a soldier in a white satin uniform. But more often, he was one half of a royal couple.

By the mid-1970s a thirty-year old George Rodrigue, now living in Lafayette, Louisiana, declared himself King. He built a platform in front of his house on Jefferson Street, where, dressed in full regalia, he and his dog greeted passing parades.

(notice Tiffany, the original model for the Blue Dog, on the royal throne. Read more about her history here-)

“I displayed a huge banner,” explains George, "that said ‘The Real King.’ Two parades passed my house on Mardi Gras Day. The party started small - just me and Tiffany on the platform. Within three years we had 500 people, all throwing custom-designed Rodrigue doubloons.”

Each year, Rodrigue made a gold medallion version of the doubloon complementing his royal attire, such as the image above, based on his classic oak tree and below, based on his bronze sculpture of Longfellow, Evangeline and Gabriel.

Guests arrived in costume and enjoyed gumbo and a cochon de lait.

(click photos to enlarge; pictures include George's son Andre Rodrigue and friends Dickie Hebert as Wonder Woman and Ed Vice, on the stage as a rabbit).

For George, the highlight each year occurred when the parade stopped at his platform, and the two kings toasted. One year, he climbed aboard the King’s float and presented a gift, a live chicken, which caused havoc among the courtiers.

(pictured, George Rodrigue presents a gift-wrapped live chicken to Louis Mann, King of the Lafayette City Krewe, Bonaparte; for more on this story, visit here-)

“The next year,” sighs George, “they moved the parades away from my house.”

In 1992, George Rodrigue reigned for the first time as an official King, ruling for the all-female Lafayette Krewe of Xanadu.

(pictured King George with Governor Kathleen and Raymond “Coach” Blanco at the Xanadu Ball; Coach taught George at Catholic High, New Iberia, and Kathleen would become Louisiana’s first female governor in 2004).

In 1994, George ruled as King of the Washington Mardi Gras (pictured above), a private Mardi Gras for 5,000 guests, hosted annually in Washington D.C. by the Louisiana Legislature. George is still heralded as one of the best kings ever. He broke many traditions, most famously choosing red satin drawers over the traditional white bloomers beneath his costume.

In addition to his 1994 reign, Rodrigue commemorated the DC event in a painting not of himself, but of his friend Marion Edwards, who was King in 1985 (related post here).

He again honored the event in 1997 with a silkscreen poster celebrating the 50^th Anniversary of the Washington, D.C. Mardi Gras Ball.

Since 1994 George has served as Grand Marshall or King for parades in New Iberia, Lafayette, Butte la Rose, Pierre Part and New Orleans. The highlight is the Argus parade in Metairie, Louisiana, where the Blue Dog float runs each year on Mardi Gras Day. As Grand Marshall of Argus, George threw Blue Dog doubloons.

In 2004, he declared himself King once more, this time celebrating his 60^th birthday. He grew a beard for the occasion and maintained a strict dress code for guests: Elvis “The King” or Marilyn Monroe.

Would you be King again? I asked, not sure of his plans.

Try as I might, however, even his other half received no answer…… only a laugh.

Wendy

*pictured above: 2004, King George with Marilyn (Wendy) by Tabitha Soren; artwork by George Rodrigue, 2012-

*also this week: “MUSE-ings from a Mardi Gras Float,” a new post for Gambit, describing our incredible ride in this year’s Krewe of Muses parade, linked here-

“One summer a German mule trader struggled to sell his last white mule. A farmer finally bought it for his daughter, and the daughter liked it so much that her friends each wanted one. In the end, the mule trader sold nine mules to nine fathers of nine little girls.”

That’s the story of the Mamou Riding Academy, according to George Rodrigue in his book The Cajuns of George Rodrigue (Oxmoor House, 1976), the first book published nationally on the Cajun culture.

-click photo to enlarge-

Yet Rodrigue fabricated the Mamou story: the German, the mules, the riding club, and even a 4^th of July parade, in a lie that caused no end of trouble for the young artist in the mid 1970s when the Mayor of Mamou took offense.

It was Jimmy Domengeaux of CODOFIL fame who diffused the situation, emphasizing Rodrigue’s respect for the Cajuns, his own heritage. Rodrigue, insisted Domengeaux, brought positive national attention to the Cajun culture through not only his paintings, but also his book, The Cajuns of George Rodrigue, chosen by Rosalind Carter and the National Endowment for the Arts as an Official Gift of State during President Jimmy Carter’s administration. (more info here)

Mamou, Louisiana is a small Cajun town in the south central part of the state, located mid-way between Lafayette and Alexandria, in Evangeline Parish, an area named for Longfellow’s tragic heroine. Its population lingers today at about 3500 residents. The area’s plentiful cotton crop gave way eventually to rice, the sustaining Mamou harvest.

George Rodrigue painted the Mamou Riding Academy, a large canvas at 36x54 inches, in 1971. He designed it in his typical style, now firmly established since completing the Aioli Dinner, his first painting with people, earlier that same year. Beneath the massive Louisiana live oaks, the figures and mules shine luminous in white, with no shadow, as though they are a string of paper dolls glued onto a dark background.

The landscape follows the line of the flag and figures, forming interesting shapes in the sky, bounded by the hard edges of archetypal Rodrigue oaks, a style perfected over the previous three years, as the young artist painted nothing but tree, ground and sky.

Okay, spill, I insisted. What’s the real history of the painting?

“I found this great photograph in a junk shop in Lafayette. It had no markings and no indication of its origin. I used it in my painting and made up a story.”

Why Mamou? I asked, wanting more.

“It’s a cool place, and I wanted to paint it. I know that the Cajuns, from the beginning, were proud to be Americans, so I turned it into a patriotic event. In real life, there was no Mamou Riding Academy, but I made it real in my mind and on the canvas. So to me, it’s true.”

As with his other Cajun paintings, Rodrigue projected the photograph’s figures onto his canvas and then arranged his landscape around them, creating a unified, strong design and a timeless, albeit fabricated, representation of the Cajun culture.

And the two figures in black? I asked.

“That was an artistic decision.”

I recognized my cue, and the interview ended.

Wendy

-As a point of interest, the stories in The Cajuns of George Rodrigue are a mixture of true and false. One of my favorite tall tales is Broussard’s Barber Shop, linked here-

-Also this week, I hope you enjoy my latest story for Gambit Weekly: “The Mardi Gras Recovery: a Story of Buddhism, Influenza and Fuzz,” linked here-

Fifteen years ago today, George Rodrigue and I married beneath a Louisiana live oak, the same Evangeline-style tree he’s painted for years, in Rip Van Winkle Gardens at Jefferson Island, Louisiana. It was a stormy day, and yet the sun emerged just long enough, as we exchanged our vows.

“It seems like yesterday,” said George’s publishing agent, Roz Cole, last night, as we enjoyed chocolate cake and Perrier-Jouet in New York City. “It seems like thirty years ago,” mumbled George, half-laughing. And yet I knew what he meant, even as we played gin rummy in our hotel room well past midnight, arguing modern art between hands.

“It makes you sick,” said George, earlier this week, to himself more than to me, as we walked through the Museum of Modern Art’s contemporary galleries.

To see what the art world’s become? I asked.

“Yeah, it really does. I mean, am I at a trade show in Salt Lake City or in one of the most magnificent museums in the world? Video, chop box, trash, candy in piles. I’ll come back next year, like I do every year, and hope for the better.”

I coaxed him from the giant atrium and the small red tuft, and we shuffled through crumpled pieces of red notebook paper (part of an installation), to Cindy Sherman.

“Who?” came the question I expected.

I caught him watching me, as my eyes and brain expanded around the magnificent show, forty years of photographs of a single subject: herself.

“What a gimmick!” said the Blue Dog Man, a bit too loud. People glanced disapprovingly, and I pulled him out, planning my return alone, and knowing that he admires Sherman, her gimmick, and especially her fortitude, but that the fun exists in grumbling.

We ran through Diego Rivera's murals ("Genius!" exclaimed George, disappointed that I even asked), paused, as we always do, at Balzac, where George leaned slightly back on his heels, mimicking the giant bronze figure's diagonal stance, and headed for The Modern (Cafe), where we spent three hours discussing our new purchase: Sherman's catalogue.

“It was graceful and beautifully surreal,” texted my childhood friend Lisa this morning about our wedding, and I’m reminded that the chaotic reality show (long before reality shows) that seemed overnight to become my life may actually have been a real life fairytale, as I walked around an age-old tree, from twelve years alone to fifteen years together, cherished, occasionally misunderstood, yet more often redefined. In a word, awesome.

Wendy

-for a related post, see “I First Loved Picasso,” linked here-

-also this week, “Francis Pavy: A Bicentennial Exhibition,” my latest story for Gambit Weekly, linked here-

“Bring me the big knife; I’m gonna cut my throat!”*

Several nights ago, as we walked in a chilly, blowing drizzle across the street from the Metropolitan Opera, I stopped, even as the crosswalk sign suggested we proceed.

“What are you doing?” asked George Rodrigue, as I explained that I saw Cher in my head, breathtaking, emerging from a New York City taxi to meet Nicholas Cage after sighing that morning, “Where’s the Met?”

“I love two things,” he said (the ‘he’ in my head is George or Cage; take your pick). “I love you, and I love the Opera. If I can have the two things that I love together for one night, I will be satisfied to give up, oh God, the rest of my life.”

The surrealism intensified as we entered the theatre. As the chandeliers ascended into the ceiling, I imagined that I sat in her seat and experienced the Opera for the first time, despite my Viennese immersion during a study abroad program years ago.

(pictured, Wings of the Dog, 1999; A Night at the Opera, 1985; both by George Rodrigue)

“I know!” exclaimed Cher, still in my head at intermission. “I mean, she was coughing her brains out, and still she had to keep singing!”

As Madame Butterfly sings good-bye to her son, portrayed by a Bunraku puppet and three masterful puppeteers, she lifts the knife to her own throat, stabbing herself with both the blade and the pain of love betrayed. The tears covered my face, and I was Cher again, as Mimi and Rodolfo (Puccini's La bohéme) sing of their passionate love, despite Mimi’s wretched illness as she dies of consumption.

(unless you were there, you've just got to watch this, the magnificent Patricia Racette and her son, a Bunraku puppet, in Puccini's Madame Butterfly's finale)

Men! I choked out, as though I were Cher, after the performance. If anyone deserved to die it was that horrible Pinkerton!

“That’s the way it was…..” started George/Cage, wisely stopping mid-sentence.

(As if the production weren't stunning enough already, Placido Domingo, mid-stage, stands alongside Patricia Racette and directed the orchestra; click photo to enlarge)

Two days later we found ourselves at The Mudlark Confectionary, a performance theatre in the Katrina-ravaged St. Roch neighborhood, just a few blocks from our Faubourg Marigny home.

Far from the Met, we hurried, sans jewelry, from the dark, abandoned street into the front room of a tiny New Orleans cottage. Looking up, George and I gasped at the sophisticated, awesome puppets, recalling our Lincoln Center experience in the most unlikely of places.

“It’s like Madame Butterfly in the dream sequence,” I whispered to George, who nodded, snapping pictures as we waited between performances.

To begin, Sir Lady Indee removed her clothes, layer by layer, on stage, until I thought surely she would stand naked before us. George grabbed my leg, and I grew flush, as I imagined, prudishly, sitting in a room with a conservative friend, also on our adventure, as we stared at the au natural Indee some six feet in front of us.

Fortunately she stopped at her step-ins, redressing herself from a roll of cellophane anchored to the wall. As she rolled the clear plastic tightly around her skin, she enchanted us all. She spoke of desire, passion, and indulgence, and I thought of Butterfly, confident in her wedding-kimono, even as Pinkerton planned (deep down) to abandon her.

-be sure and click the photo to enlarge-

“I ain’t no freakin’ monument to justice!” shouted Cage, in the movie and in my head. “I lost my hand! I lost my bride! Johnny has his hand! Johnny has his bride! You want me to take my heartache, put it away and forget?”

Elliot, a woman, seemingly a man, seemingly a woman (not in the least to be confused with Victor Victoria) took the stage.

“Is that a man or a woman?” whispered George.

“A woman,” I said, thinking, Does it matter?

With a bird’s voice, sometimes a lark, sometimes a gull, she sang her own anguished creed, alternating between the banjo, bass drum, classical guitar, and small electric piano.

“I’m from Philadelphia,” she explained.

The audience cheered in support, as did New Orleans artist James Michalopoulos, our co-host with his wife Reese Johanson, founder of Artist Inc, both great advocates of New Orleans theatre. "Rocky!" shouted James, caught up in the moment.

Elliot, consumed by her expression, began her hometown lament a capella.

“This is the most tormented man I have ever known,” said Chrissy in the movie and in my head.

After five songs, we left, passing on the cds but leaving $20 on the table. Although we appreciated the performances and will revisit the Mudlark on another day, at that moment we never wanted to hear such agony again.

“I’m in love with this man,” continued Chrissy about Ronnie Cammareri (Cage), “but he doesn’t know that, ‘cause I never told him, ‘cause he could never love anybody since he lost his hand and his girl.”

Once home, George shook his head and organized his photos, now sprinkled throughout this post. "I'm a little afraid to ask," he said...

“...but what are we doing tomorrow?”

Wendy

*unless otherwise noted, all quotes are from the movie Moonstruck, 1987-

-for a related post see "A Night at the Opera," a story I wrote for Gambit, posted here-

-also this week, Lafayette artist Francis Pavy in my latest post for Gambit, linked here-

“She was like a woman of Leonardo da Vinci’s, whom we love not so much for herself as for the things that she will not tell us.” –Cecil Vyse, A Room with a View by E.M. Forster, 1908

Certain paintings, particularly a certain era of paintings, transport us, if we let them, to another age of humankind. I say ‘humankind’ instead of the more colloquial ‘mankind’ because lately, although I shy away from politics in blogging and conversation, we women face oppression on some scale or, more accurately, the fight for women’s rights, as though this is the United States 1913, and the question of women’s suffrage hangs in the balance.*

If we’re still fighting for a voice today in the United States of America, how must it have been for the Italian girl in the portrait above, immortalized (by men) like a few elite others, within frowning, idealized wedding impressions sixteen years before da Vinci’s smiling subject suggested that just maybe a woman holds a secret or, Heaven forbid, an opinion.

Currently the Metropolitan Museum of Art hosts a magnificent exhibition of Renaissance portraits, men and women, up to 1510. I thought of each painting in terms of the Mona Lisa (1504) --- whether Florentine with endless vistas spreading behind the subject, or Venetian, captured on shiny black backgrounds, more like figures painted on a polished obsidian rock rather than an empty, infinite space --- and how this famous painting of a woman, painted by a man and copied by many, altered perception, so that mankind became humankind, and humankind became the individual.

What do you think of the Mona Lisa? I asked George Rodrigue.

“In that vein of ‘humankind,’ the Mona Lisa became the most famous painting in the world portraying an unknown subject. It represents a common person rather than a noble one.

"Da Vinci’s contemporaries saw the painting in his studio and were shocked that he painted it not as a commission, not to make someone famous, but rather for the pure joy of capturing a persona on canvas. With the Mona Lisa, the artist was no longer exclusively a craftsman interpreting other’s ideas.”

(George Rodrigue painted Jolie Blonde in 1974 not as a commission, but for himself, from his imagination; read more here)

From "The Renaissance Portrait," I spent hours within "The Steins Collect," falling in love again with Matisse, and laughing at the all-too-familiar deals the young Picasso, always in need of money, wielded in 1907 Paris.

As a teacher, Matisse reminds me of George who, although he enjoys students’ renderings of the Blue Dog, far prefers that they find their own direction, that they use their imagination and spirit to create things in their own way.

(pictured, Color is Just a Color, 2007, acrylic on canvas by George Rodrigue, 40x30 inches)

“The idea is more important than the execution,” I’ve heard him say many times. It’s the reason Salvador Dali, despite no visual connection between their works, remains his favorite artist and the only artist he claims inspires him.

“Matisse,” wrote Annette Rosenshine, a friend of the Steins, “was disappointed if the students merely followed in his footsteps. He had struggled desperately for his own artistic freedom and was not interested in creating little Matisses, but wished to help the students find their own individual expression.”

(pictured, The Cajun Icon by Richie Smith, Sterlington High School, Monroe, Louisiana; First Place Senior Winner of the 2012 George Rodrigue Art Contest, including a $6,000 college scholarship)

‘Humankind’ applies here as well, as Matisse encourages personal interpretation and, more than a century later, Richie Smith uses his imagination, making a distinctive, yet universal statement of his Louisiana’s Bicentennial.

The most famous of the Stein collectors, Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), as painted by Pablo Picasso in 1906 (above, Metropolitan Museum of Art), encouraged creativity across the board. She embraced painting, opera and writing, and enjoyed great friendships with Picasso and Matisse, artists struggling at the time for public and particularly critical recognition.

Even her portrait, which she adored, is a testament to this mindset. When others commented that the young Stein looked little like her painting, Picasso responded, to her amusement, “She will.”

From the Met, I continued to The Frick Collection, where I encountered “Renoir, Impressionism, and Full-Length Painting.” There I reassessed humankind, womankind, again. I thought of Lucy Honeychurch in the screen adaptation (1986) of E.M. Forster’s A Room With a View:

“As for your loving me, you don’t, not really.
You don’t. It’s only as something else.
As something you own. A painting, a Leonardo.
I don’t want to be a Leonardo,
I want to be myself.”

Enchanted by Renoir’s women, I noted that they are not portraits, but rather subjects filling his vision of French society, from their stylish clothing to the light reflecting from their shapes. And yet, unlike the harsh criticism of the day, I see nothing offensive in these dancing figures, in a woman who dares remove her gloves in public. In fact, in thinking about contemporary art, I wonder whatever happened to the notion of a ‘beautiful painting.’

I asked George Rodrigue about Renoir, and his answer, in part, surprised me.

“I never particularly liked him,” he said. “But I understand what he was doing and I admire the concept of Impressionism. I mean, photography was a shock, seeing how the light bounces off of the figure into the film.

“Before photography, the artist drew a form first, emphasizing the shape in an almost technical way. ….think of Michelangelo’s Renaissance drawings. The artist was as aware of the backside of the head as he was the front.

“The Impressionists could care less about the backside of the form; they only wanted an impression of what they saw.”

From Renoir’s impressions at the Frick, we encountered Cindy Sherman’s illusions at MOMA, an interesting contrast.

Again, George Rodrigue and I disagreed --- not a squabble, but a way of seeing, linked, I believe, directly to notions of ‘womankind.’ He says ‘no,’ however, (and we disagree some more) but that the differences are based on his artistic understanding, which may partly be true.

It’s the kind of discussion we live for, a true exchange of ideas, in which he gives my brain, a woman’s brain, as much credit as his own. But more on that in the post “Our Anniversary,” linked here.

Wendy

*“Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me,” remarked Hillary Clinton this week at the Women in the World Summit. “But they all seem to. It doesn’t matter what country they’re in or what religion they claim. They want to control how we dress; they want to control how we act; they even want to control the decisions we make about our own health and our own bodies.”

In 1992 George Rodrigue painted Washington Blue Dog, a tribute to the United States of America’s capitol, Washington, DC. The painting is one of his most famous. Its prints hang in the offices of Blue Dog Democrats and their affiliates, an obvious choice for the group. The original oil on canvas (48x60 inches), owned by the Randy Haynie Family in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, appears often within museum exhibitions, thanks to Haynie’s generosity, most recently at the Rodrigue retrospective at the LSU Museum of Art (more info here).

The Blue Dog Democrat's link to his artwork was not Rodrigue’s intention, however. In fact, he’s made a concerted effort over the years to avoid any political connection within his art, excepting paintings such as No More Dukes (pictured here), painted in 1996 during former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke’s campaign for the U.S. Senate, and Throw Me Something F.E.M.A. (pictured here) following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, both works created out of his personal political frustration.

In addition, his paintings of U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton were commissioned by their respective parties and had no connection to Rodrigue’s own political position, which he prefers remain private. This is also true of his Louisiana Governor portraits, including Huey Long, Earl Long, Edwin Edwards, Kathleen Blanco and Bobby Jindal.

Yet he battles the Blue Dog Democrat connection as though he founded the group himself. I asked George Rodrigue for the real story:

“A few years after I started painting the Blue Dog, a local politician in Lafayette asked me if I knew about the Blue Dog Democrats in Louisiana. I said “no,” and he recounted his version of the origin. We had no Republican party since the Civil War. All early Louisiana primaries were Democratic, but those included many factions, including New Orleans, Cajun country, North Louisiana and the African-American population. These groups were divided by ideology, some more conservative than others, but all within the Democratic Party.

"At some point, the more liberal side became Yellow Dog Democrats and the more conservative side, Blue Dog Democrats. When I first heard this story in the early 1990s, the Republican party had a foothold in Louisiana. The old terms were outdated. I wasn’t aware of the Blue Dog Democrats in modern times until U.S. Congressman Jimmy Hayes of Lafayette, Louisiana pushed this term once again to the forefront, renaming the ‘Boll Weevil’ Democrats the ‘Blue Dogs.’

“Without my permission they adopted my image. As usually happens with hometown folk, they assumed that they were doing me a favor. Instead I’ve spent the past twenty years trying to distance myself and my artwork from this connection.” - George Rodrigue

Wendy

-pictured above, all Blue Dog Democrat members of the United States Congress, 1996 (click photo to enlarge). They gathered within Union Station, Washington DC, during Rodrigue’s “Blue Dog for President.” See related paintings from that all-American exhibition here-

-also this week, I hope you enjoy “Green Light,” my latest story for Gambit Weekly, featuring the drawings and fluorescent light bulb sculptures of Irish American artist Dan Flavin, linked here-

LSU Football: A Personal History

Hiding From the Blues

Victory on Bayou St. John

Blue Wendy

The Family Table

The Working Artist

George Rodrigue: Painting Louisiana

Happy Christmas

Farewell to Exhibitions; Welcome to Painting

Swamp Dogs: A Series on Metal

Risky Business

Four for Mardi Gras

Painting Like a Child... Again

MUSE-ings from a Mardi Gras Float

All Hail King George

The Mamou Riding Academy: Fact or Fiction

Our Anniversary

Moonstruck, Madame Butterfly and the Mudlark

The Human in the Painting

Washington Blue Dog (and the Blue Dog Democrats)