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Pensacola Museum of Art hosts Cajuns, Blue Dogs and Hurricanes: The Art of George Rodrigue

Stephanie Kress, Pensacola Museum of Art

The Pensacola Museum of Art(PMA) invites you to meander down the Louisiana way where the light is filtered through grand oak trees draped with Spanish moss and the air is alight with the spicy smell of cooking, to the land of Cajuns and Blue Dogs. This Spring, the PMA invites you to celebrate the art of George Rodrigue.

The PMA is kicking off its 50th Anniversary Celebration with Cajuns, Blue Dogs and Hurricanes: the Art of George Rodrigue, a 40-year retrospective of over 50 works of the artist George Rodrigue. The exhibit opens at the PMA on April 2 and continues through May 15, 2004.
April 2-3 will be the official kickoff with a Blue Dog Weekend at the PMA. Friday, April 2, begins with the opening reception for Cajuns, Blue Dogs and Hurricanes: the Art of George Rodrigue from 5 p.m. till 7 p.m. Our reception sponsor Seville Quarter will be on hand to serve Blue Hurricanes in honor of this spectacular exhibition. The PMA is also honored to have the artist George Rodrigue and his wife Wendy for the reception as well. This preview reception is a benefit of PMA membership. Guests are welcome at $10 per person.

On Saturday, April 3, George Rodrigue will be at the PMA Saturday Workshop for Kids to help the young budding artists paint pictures of their own pets during the workshop. Please call Kelly Snyder, Education Coordinator at 432-6247 for more information on the workshop.
Following the workshop from 2:30 - 5:00 p.m. Rodrigue will hold a book signing at the PMA of his latest publication The Art of George Rodrigue. States Rodrigue in an interview with the Shreveport Times,¯It is the first (book) that really explains from 1968 to the present, and it just shows the whole continuation. That's . . . what other books hadn't done, you know, how did you jump from the Cajun to the blue dog."
You can get your copy now at the PMA Museum Store.

And, just announced, Rodrigue has completed a limited edition silkscreen to commemorate his exhibition at the PMA. These signed and numbered works will also be on sale in the Museum Store. The cost is $750. Please call the PMA for dates of availability.

Over the past 40 years, Rodrigue has completed three major bodies of works: Cajuns, Blue Dogs and Hurricanes. This retrospective includes paintings from each of these groups including Rodrigue's famous Blue Dog paintings such as Watchdog, the first ever Blue Dog painting, and Loup Garou among others. The exhibition includes works from the 1960s and 1970s including his popular Aioli Dinner and Straubs Coulee. The retrospective continues to present day with his latest works of Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and the LSU Mascot Mike the Tiger.

George Rodrigue was born in 1944 in New Iberia, Louisiana. He began painting when he was nine and bedridden from a bout of Polio. He continued to study art through college, traveling to Los Angeles to attend school. In the late 60s, Rodrigue came back to his home in southwestern Louisiana to paint what was becoming a dying way of life, his Cajun way of life. ¯. . . the Painter's interest was documentary." writes Michael Lewis in the Preface to Rodrigues latest publication "The Art of George Rodrigue". Dismissing the sentimentality that artists used when attempting to portray the world of Cajun Louisiana, Rodrigue instead chose " a painterly moil as opaque and untelling as the local swamp waters, using ¯heavy oil, very thick, applied with a brush, very bold." comments Ginger Danto in her Introduction to the aforementioned book. It was these works known simply as his "Cajuns" that first brought Rodrigue critical acclaim.

Rodrigue continued to draw critical acclaim throughout the 70s with his pictures of Cajuns that by then had transformed from Louisiana landscape scenes to pictures of the people of Cajun Louisiana. It was not until 1984 in a book of forty ghost stories titled "Bayou" that the Blue Dog first appeared. The figure transpired out of Rodrigue's need to find a suitable character to portray the loup garou or werewolf for the story's plot. After much thought, Rodrigue struck upon the idea of using his late dog Tiffany as a model for the creature who, in the books, would haunt the sugarcane fields. The "narrative moonlight" in the painting gave the dog its now famous blue color and thus the legend of the Blue Dog was born.

In 2002 in the aftermath of Hurricane Lili, Rodrigue began his Hurricane series. Rodrigue witnessed the destruction and turmoil that Lili left behind her on the coast of Louisiana which led him to see that the swirls of color seen throughout his life's work had now taken on a most significant meaning. "Along the way, as a hurricane randomly destroys things in its path, Blue Dog, or much else recognizable, was gone, leaving only a great swallow of storm to glory in the wild movement of color and paint." writes Danto in her Afterward. Still, Blue Dog has resurfaced and in a final comment Danto writes, "How fitting once again the dog's expression, its prescient fright, its shock of seeing, against the perpetual yellow storm, the limbo of spun cloud, of almost nuclear glow, a force beyond reckoning. As if somewhere Blue Dog saw it coming all along."

This exhibition is organized by the Pensacola Museum of Art in collaboration with George Rodrigue. The PMA is open Tuesday through Friday 10 am - 5pm and Saturday -Sunday 12- 5. The cost is $5.00 for adults and $2.00 for students and active military. For more information, please call the PMA at 850-432-6247 or visit www.pensacolamuseumofart.org.

3/24/2004