Lucas Fetches Lowbrow Icon
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| Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, A Pat Hand, 1894. Lucas Museum of Narrative Art |
Self-taught Cassius Marcellus Coolidge (1844–1934) was a sign painter and newspaper cartoonist who hit on the idea of funny pictures of dogs playing cards. He created the first examples in Rochester, NY, in 1894. A Pat Hand is thus one of the earliest and (insert air quotes) best of these paintings. It's bigger than you might expect (41-5/8 × 50 in.), and the facial expressions are subtler than in some of Coolidge's repetitions. While there's no realistic way of showing dog paws holding cards and cigars, the attempts here are relatively graceful.
Fun fact: Coolidge's card players were contemporary with Cézanne's (1890–1895).
There were other artists doing funny animal pictures. Coolidge was probably aware of Sir Edwin Landseer (who did sentimental/maudlin animal pictures as well as funny ones) and certainly of his older American contemporary William Holbrook Beard (who favored monkeys and bears engaged in human occupations). None of these artists are household names, but "Dogs Playing Poker" has transcended Coolidge himself to become the lowbrow Mona Lisa.
That cultural profile is due to the power of mass reproduction. In 1903 a Minneapolis ad agency commissioned Coolidge to produce a set of 16 dogs playing poker pictures to advertise cigars. Reproduced by the hundreds of thousands as prints, calendars, and merch, the copies ensured the paintings' fame, if not their respect. Coolidge did versions with commuter dogs playing cards on a train… dogs cheating at cards… bulldog police raiding the game… a poodle-wife dragging card-playing hubbie home (he's in the dog house!) Long before memes were a thing, Coolidge's poker dogs were hand-painted slop. They remain a staple of pop culture, making appearances in The Simpsons (multiple times), Family Guy, Parks and Recreation, The Thomas Crown Affair, and the video for Snoop Dogg's "What's My Name?" We laugh at as well as with Coolidge. Dogs playing poker has become a universal shorthand for bad art and bad taste.
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| Attributed to Jörg Lederer, Saint Sebastian, about 1515–1520. Lucas Museum of Narrative Art |
Also new to the Lucas is a German Renaissance Saint Sebastian in gilt and painted limewood. It was part of the collection of New York interior designer Hester Diamond, mother of the Beastie Boys' Mike D. Sotheby's auctioned the Diamond collection to considerable fanfare in 2021, and Saint Sebastian went for $528,200. Dealer Sam Fogg sold it to the Lucas the following year.
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| Saint Sebastian in Hester Diamond's New York home |
The 46-in.-high sculpture is attributed to Jörg Lederer (about 1475 to about 1550), a contemporary of Veit Stoss and Tilman Reimenschneider. In fact, Sotheby's sold it as a Lederer. The caption to the Lucas' Instagram post identifies it as "attributed to" the artist, suggesting that questions may have arisen about its authorship.
Even if it's a workshop piece, there aren't many comparable sculptures in Los Angeles. The Getty has a small, unpainted crucifix by Veit Stoss and a painted St. John the Baptist by the anonymous Master of the Harburger Altar.
The Lucas' collection of 20th-century African-American art has an early, figurative Norman Lewis Street Scene. Christie's sold it for $439,500, almost triple the high estimate, in 2017. Just nominally "narrative," it points toward the abstraction for which Lewis is best known.
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| Norman Lewis, Street Scene, 1941. Lucas Museum of Narrative Art |
There's been a lot of talk about LACMA as a nonhierarchical museum. Yet ultimately the Geffen is a monument to global good taste. With its poker dogs alongside Renaissance saints, the Lucas appears set on upending the hierarchy of high and low. It's a reminder that not all powerful forms of visual expression are subtle, smart, or edifying.
Comments
> founded the kitschy
> genre of dogs playing
> poker.
I didn't realize the look of that often-mocked image dates back to the 1800s. I thought it was "treacle" from the 1950s-1970s. So the Lucas will help educating folks like me.
> It's bigger than you
> might expect
Its dimensions should make it stand out. I believe a lot of other works in the museum will be poster or magazine-cover sized.
I used to think big canvases were somehow a format favored by contemporary art/artists, then I realized places like the Louvre also have plenty of works of several feet in width, several feet in length.
> the Lucas appears set
> on upending the hierarchy
> of high and low.
The history of LACMA makes Los Angeles regrettably a place that shouldn't throw too many stones---ie people living in glass houses. Both Brown/Pereira and now, in other (or maybe similar) ways, Govan/Zumthor are doing things that illustrate a fine line between rube and sophisticate, amateur and professional.
As in 1965, I notice various people having a slightly guarded opinion of the Geffen Galleries, if not being generally unimpressed with its look and format. IOW, it's sort of William-Pereira Redux.
If a visitor from, say, Texas visits LA and goes to LACMA, even in 2026 I can see that person still having an opinion that their public art museum is better than LA's. Or similar to the person from Minnesota who posted a comment about the 1965-1986 campus in LA not being as good as her Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston:
As director of the MFAH from 1982 to 2010, Peter C. Marzio ushered the Museum into a remarkable era of growth, with the expansion of the permanent collection from 14,000 to 62,000 works of art; the development of the Isamu Noguchi–designed...Sculpture Garden in 1986 and the Rafael Moneo–designed...Beck Building in 2000; and the land purchase for the site of the...Kinder Building, opening in November 2020.
If the Pereira/Hardy-Holzman-Pfeiffer buildings hadn't been torn down in 2020 (20 years after what the MFAH had done), damn, LACMA really would symbolize J. Garcin's "rube."
> on Instagram
Meanwhile, I notice LACMA has posted this...
lacma, Instagram:
The reviews are in !!! Experience the excitement for yourself → our David Geffen Galleries are now open to all
denenbergfinearts:
Man on the street ignorance and dimness. The building is a catastrophe for the curators, the collections, and the knowledgeable discerning community of scholars and collectors. [End quote]
^ That reply lays it on way too thick, but variations of his (or her) reactions do exist. Which is why LACMA 2026 isn't necessarily way above that of LACMA 1965.
I don't trust Govan and his staffers to understand why they haven't crossed all their t's and dotted all their i's. In effect, that's somewhat of a repeat of Richard Brown and William Pereira.