I let this painting go for a song, and too soon. It was the start of a series, and a marker of how I tend to pull threads into a fixed image – a one line cipher to a general approach. Here’s a bit I’ve pieced together from several emails:
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“Cigar Mutt 1917” shows a French bulldog in 1917, painted from a newsreel still. He delivered tobacco to troops in the trenches. The title alludes to Duchamp’s “Fountain” of the same year which he signed “R. Mutt.” The dog’s name was also “Mutt.” I was interested in the disconnect between these two events an ocean apart—the close personal experience of the beloved dog at war, and the removed cerebralism of a Dadaist in New York City. Disorienting to see the responsibility of conflict poured into the little body of a knowing being. A contraption of string strains utility and credulity. Misery of war made romantic with soldier ingenuity. Situationist art. The sentiment behind a cigarette, passing experience, smoke, the smell of pee. Happy to be here. Patient, void of drama. An ocean away, R. Mutt leaves it all behind.
It’s painted like patches of information, as an image pulled out of time, barely holding together, alla prima.