A Friend in Need Indeed
Jerry Kindall points to a New York Times article on Cassius Marcellus Coolidge. Just who is C.M. Coolidge? Does the phrase “dogs playing poker” ring a bell?
Artist’s Fame Is Fleeting, but Dog Poker Is Forever
by Dan Barry, New York TimesAs if to add a dash more insult to Coolidge’s anonymous lot, few call his seminal work by its given name. Instead, most people refer to “A Friend in Need” — indeed, the majority of the Coolidge oeuvre — as “Dogs Playing Poker,” which is not unlike referring to one of Van Gogh’s self portraits as “Guy Missing an Ear.”
A murky childhood memory tells me that my grandfather had a print of “A Friend in Need” although all efforts to find it over the years or even corroborate the memory have failed. Maybe I just wanted him to have had a copy.
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Posted to Oh, the Humanity • 2002.08.08 (Thu) • 11:02
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