News -> Letters to the Editor MON, APR 6 6:00PM by Philip Gould, Lafayette

A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE ON RODRIGUE

“…And laughs all the way to the bank?” Mr. Pierce you have hit the nerve with your last line in your column on why George Rodrigue is so controversial. Just why would he be laughing?

I have known George for decades and always admired his earlier works; “The Aioli Dinner” is a masterpiece, one of the best paintings to come out of Louisiana. And I assert that Rodrigue found an essential truth about this region when he painted his landscapes in a brooding manner. I have seen that brooding landscape often myself when photographing over the years.

But somewhere along the way Rodrigue changed as an artist. His early works portrayed Cajun ancestors much like ghosts, almost glowing in a brooding landscape. The paintings effectively conveyed a sense of a time beyond reach from the present, but still within memory.

But over time, that landscape became simply a background for any portrait, be it Huey Long, or Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev. That is fine, but I feel it devalued the integrity of George’s original vision. Rodrigue, himself, even poked fun at all this; I remember one painting where he paints the brooding landscape as a stage backdrop.

Are the countless versions of the Blue Dog, same dog, same stance, same expression art or cartoon? Nothing changes or evolves with each painting except the background, be it the White House and Congress, or anything else. Key constant, that blue dog.

A good while back, Rodrigue painted another version of the Aioli dinner. In this version, the viewer looks down on the scene from overhead, but in this painting the figures are far more simplistic, the landscape far less intriguing. It is totally lacking in the depth of the original, like a bad sequel to a great movie. It is a Rodrigue, no doubt, but also a barometer, a marker of where he was artistically and where, in my view, he has taken it.

George has done well financially, no doubt. Many people still value his work. Ultimately, I feel they are buying the name.

Perhaps it’s time to curb the blue dog, and for Rodrigue to unleash the artist within that started it all.

Comments (3)

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written by Johnny L. , April 08, 2009 - 03:27 pm

I guess it's not too much of a surprise that Mr. Gould, whose own "art" is comprised of wedding pictures and postcard shots of Louisiana, would object to an artist following his own personal
artistic interests and vision, whatever that may be. I suppose
Picasso should have just stuck with portaits instead of messing
around with all them cubes . . .

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written by Arty Abamowitz , April 14, 2009 - 05:05 pm

Campbell's Soup Can, Xerox, Blue Dog, Campbell's Soup Can, Xerox, Blue Dog, Campbell's Soup Can, Xerox, Blue Dog, Campbell's Soup Can, Xerox, Blue Dog, Campbell's Soup Can, Xerox, Blue Dog, Campbell's Soup Can, Xerox, Blue Dog, Campbell's Soup Can, Xerox, Blue Dog, Campbell's Soup Can, Xerox, Blue Dog, Campbell's Soup Can, Xerox, Blue Dog, Campbell's Soup Can, Xerox, Blue Dog, Campbell's Soup Can, Xerox, Blue Dog, Campbell's Soup Can, Xerox, Blue Dog, Campbell's Soup Can, Xerox, Blue Dog, Campbell's Soup Can, Xerox, Blue Dog, Campbell's Soup Can, Xerox, Blue Dog...

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written by Clement Greenberg , April 27, 2009 - 03:17 pm

"Kitsch's enormous profits are a source of temptation to the avant-garde itself, and its members have not always resisted this temptation. Ambitious writers and artists will modify their work under the pressure of kitsch, if they do not succumb to it entirely... The net result is always to the detriment of true culture, in any case.
Kitsch: popular, commercial art...ersatz culture destined for those who, insensible to the values of genuine culture, are hungry nevertheless for the diversion that only culture of some sort can provide. Kitsch, using for raw material the debased and academicized simulacra of genuine culture, welcomes and cultivates this insensibility. It is the source of its profits. Kitsch is mechanical and operates by formulas. Kitsch is vicarious experience and faked sensations. Kitsch changes according to style but remains always the same. Kitsch is the epitome of all that is spurious in the life of our times. Kitsch pretends to demand nothing of its customers except for their money - not even their time...(an artist) pre-digests art for the spectator and spares him the effort, provides him with a short cut to the pleasure of art that detours what is necessarily difficult in genuine art...kitsch is synthetic art."

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