027 SMITH JOURNALdogged by success
FILED IN YOUR HIPPOCAMPUS UNDER D FOR DOG, P FOR POKER AND
K FOR KITSCH, A FRIEND IN NEED IS ONE OF THE MOST RECOGNISABLE
ARTWORKS OF ALL TIME. SO WHY IS ITS CREATOR VIRTUALLY UNKNOWN?Writer James Shackell Photographer Jeremy BowtellTHREE SAINT BERNARDS, ONE
COLLIE, A SPOTTED HOUND AND TWO
BULLDOGS ARE SITTING AROUND A
GREEN FELT TABLE, PLAYING POKER.
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It’s 1:10am and the whisky is three claws deep.
Two of the dogs are smoking pipes, while the
grey bulldog chomps a Churchillian cigar
(perhaps to distract from the ace he’s slipping
his partner beneath the table). The collie’s
already lost his collar, and has the inebriated
grin of the serial gambler who’s one paw away
from betting the kennel. A few storm-tossed
sailboats bob on the back wall.
The painting is A Friend in Need, but you
probably know it as ‘Dogs Playing Poker’.
Virtually everyone is familiar with the
scene, but like most familiar things, there’s
more to know than most people realise.
A Friend in Need was painted in 1903 by
American artist Cassius Marcellus ‘Cash’
Coolidge, a forgotten turn-of-the-century
genius who’s remembered now only in his
hometown of Philadelphia. The advertising
agency Brown & Bigelow commissioned
Coolidge to paint a 16-canvas series, designed
to promote cigars. And so, for reasons that
remain unknown, Coolidge went to town
painting dogs in court (smoking cigars), dogs
playing pool (smoking cigars), dogs barking
from the baseball bleachers (still smoking
cigars), and yes, dogs playing poker, eyeing one
another over smouldering meerschaum pipes,
beadily counting their chips.It’s not clear whether Coolidge favoured
dogs due to some deep, unspoken canine
fascination, or if he was simply masking
artistic limitations – art critics have noted
a certain animal-like quality in his human
subjects. ‘’His paintings of people look like
dogs,’’ says Moira F. Harris, an art historian
in St. Paul. ‘’I don’t think his people are very
good, but his dogs are wonderful.’’They are, too. Although the art community
dismissed the works as novelty gags, Coolidge
had a knack for capturing human expression
in fur. Art nerds will pick up the fingerprints
of Georges de la Tour and Paul Cézanne in
the composition, even touches of Caravaggio’s
trademark chiaroscuro. You can almost
smell the kibble.There’s a certain school of art criticism that
treats commercial popularity with deep
suspicion. If ordinary, uneducated people
can appreciate a painting, the theory goes,
the painting must not be very good. So while
Coolidge was shunned by the intelligentsia,
A Friend in Need had the honour of becoming
incredibly popular with the working class.By the 1970s, there was hardly a blue-collar
home in America that didn’t have ‘Dogs
Playing Poker’ hanging in the den.Suddenly the painting was being celebrated
(and dismissed) as the greatest piece of
kitsch the country had ever seen. A roadside
attraction on the American psyche, up there
with Elvis jumpsuits and battered corn
dogs. So tacky that it somehow transcended
tackiness, and in fact became a dark mirror
for the sort of snobs who viewed the world in
those terms. But perhaps that’s the joke. In
their 2004 book, Poplorica, Martin Smith
and Patrick Kiger suggest that the whole
series was a way for Coolidge to satirise the
upper classes, mocking their excesses. It was
a gag that obviously failed to register.Of course the real irony now is that Coolidge
canvases sell for big bucks. In 2015, his 1894
Poker Game (a predecessor to A Friend in
Need) netted $658,000 U.S.D. at auction. Not
a bad legacy for a guy whose 1934 obituary
listed his major accomplishment as “painted
many pictures of dogs.” Alas, it wasn’t just
the artistic set that didn’t see eye-to-eye with
Coolidge; his family never really understood
his canine obsession either. In 2002, his
92-year-old daughter, Gertrude, claimed she
and her mother had always been more ‘cat
people’. “You can’t imagine a cat playing poker
though,” she admitted. “It doesn’t seem to go.” •