Hello I'm artist Lillian Gray. I would like you to meet someone, American artist George
Rodrigue. George Rodrigue became famous for his blue dog painting. The blue dog paintings based
on Cajun legend of the Loup-garou, catapulted George Rodrigue to worldwide fame. He painted
a bright blue dog with yellow eyes doing all kinds of things, such as Blue dog in space,
Blue dog visiting the White House, Blue dog as a cowboy, Blue dog at the beach and even blue dog
on a flying carpet! Let’s delve a little deeper into Cajun Culture and George Rodrigue’s story
to discover the meaning behind this blue dog. Just before we start, I'd like to tell you, you can
purchase our awesome George Rodrigue worksheets from our website or our Teachers pay Teacher store.
We have worksheets on George Rodrigue for various ages. Rodrique was born in Southern Louisiana in
1944. At the age of eight, George was diagnosed with polio and he had to remain in bed for months.
Being bed bound cultivated a love for art, especially drawing and painting.
When he completed school, he studied art at the university of Southwest Louisiana
and later he traveled all the way to California to study art and design. While studying in Los Angeles,
George realized how different and unique Louisiana was. He longed for the old culture of the Cajun.
"I grew up feeling a strong relationship to the old things, to the old culture
Louisiana with its almost uninhabitable marshy landscapes. During the 18th and 19th century
and I got an even stronger feeling when I went to Los Angeles to school
I started to understand how different I was and how different my beloved Louisiana was"
George returned to Louisiana in the late 1960s and became
well known for his interpretations of the Cajun landscapes, and subjects inspired by his roots.
So what is Cajun culture exactly? The Cajuns, also known as the Acadians
is a specific community mainly living in the United States of America in Louisiana. Most
Acadians are of French descent. The Cajuns make up a significant portion of the state's population,
and have had an enormous impact on the state's culture. But how did they get there?
When the new world aka America was discovered, various people from Europe came to settle
in America and Canada to start a new life. The Acadian French settlers initially settled mainly
in Canada on the East Coast. In 1756 war broke out between the British and the French settlers.
It is known as the seven year war. Eventually the British won and many Acadians were captured and
deported. Many farms and businesses were destroyed. The deportation of the Acadians from these areas
has become known as the great upheaval or the great expulsion. Many Acadians were driven to
Louisiana, with its almost uninhabitable marshy landscape.
During the 18th and 19th century
the Arcadians became known as the Cajuns, the French-speaking rural people of Louisiana.
Okay, let's fast forward a bit to the early 20th century. Attempts were made to suppress Cajun
culture. The Cajun-French language was forbidden in schools. American teachers threatened and punished
and sometimes even beat the Cajun students in an attempt to force them to speak English, a language
which many of them have not yet been exposed to. Over the 20th century a sense of nostalgia
formed in the people of Louisiana. A longing for an idealized past. Cajun
was formerly considered an insult, but it became a term of pride by the beginning of the 21st century.
Since their establishment in Louisiana, the Cajuns have become famous for the unique French dialect,
Louisiana-French and they have developed a vibrant culture including folkways, dances, music
and cuisine. Okay, back to artist George Rodrigue. He was born in Louisiana and he was of Cajun descent.
His mother felt strongly that they were not Cajun, they were French. She did not want to be associated
with the derogatory word Cajun. In contrast, Rodrigue wanted to change the negative connection with
the word Cajun. Instead he wanted to celebrate his culture. In the 1960s Rodrigue started painting
Louisiana landscapes. He also painted the large family gatherings which the Cajuns are known for.
You will notice that this period of his art is filled with landscapes done in dark, dull colours,
not at all like his later works which are bright and vibrant. But this period is essential since it
formed George Rodrigue's style and eventually led him to create Blue Dog. Rodrigues's early,
most notable work include the Aioli dinner. It is probably George Rodrigues most famous painting.
It is based on the old French dinner parties held in Louisiana between 1819 and the 1920s.
Traditionally, they met once a month on the lawn of a plantation home to celebrate their culture
and food with a six-hour dinner. George painted various faces of his own Cajun ancestors, sitting
around a table enjoying this traditional dinner. The painting took George six months to complete.
It could be described as a dinner of ghosts, since these figures
never really sat down for dinner together. Only in George's imagination.
After completing the Aioli dinner, George announced proudly to his mother: "I am now a Cajun artist".
She was offended, appalled, and begged him to label himself as something else, anything else,
but George refused. He saw his culture fading before his eyes, the modern world was consuming it,
and George was committed to interpreting and preserving the Cajun culture on canvas.
And this is exactly what he did for the next 20 years. It is said that George has
reached his ambitious goals already with this first painting. Even if he stopped painting
after the Aioli dinner, George still would have played a significant role in preserving
his culture. George valued this artwork immensely and he knew that he created something significant.
He kept on raising the painting's price and always made it his most expensive painting. He kept it in
his gallery for 15 years and today it is on permanent loan to an art museum. As he started
being known as a Cajun cultural artist he became recognized and celebrated in France and in Italy.
He started getting various commissions to paint famous people in his unique style. He
painted the celebrity chef Paul Prudhomme, who helped popularize Cajun food and culture in
the 1970s. He started doing portraits, commissions for writers and politicians. Eventually presidents
started commissioning George Rodrigue. These include Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.
One of his commissions was when he was asked to paint a collection of Cajun
ghost stories. One of the stories that he needed to paint was about a werewolf
known as the Loup-garou. George knew the story well. His mom used to tell him as a little boy,
"if you are naughty a werewolf from the forest will come and get you". It's a typical boogeyman story,
and it's an old French tale told to children in France so that they would behave. While working
on this ghost story, George paged through his visual diary and his scrapbooks, looking
for a possible visual reference for a werewolf. He stumbled upon a photo of his deceased dog, Tiffany.
Now Tiffany was not a wolf, she was a dog, and she wasn't blue, she was black and white. But since
the story of the Loup-garou is set at night time, during a full moon, George wanted to capture the
effect of moonlight and the night sky on colour, so Tiffany's fur became blue and her eyes yellow.
George became fascinated with the Loup-garou image and painted it repeatedly. For four years he called
it the loup-garou. One day at an art exhibition, he overheard people calling the painting the
Blue Dog and this changed everything for George. It altered George's thoughts and he realized he could
use the blue dog as an icon for Cajun culture. A symbol that would be catchy and easy to relate to.
He always hung the blue dog portrait at eye level, the dog was staring straight into the viewer's
eyes. Viewers would never look down on the dog nor the dog down at them. He always painted the dog
as if it was a person, and he always kept Blue Dog in the same position so that it could become an
icon, a symbol, a kind of stamp for Cajun culture. When asked, George said, the yellow eyes are the
soul of the dog, he has this piercing stare, people say the dog keeps talking to them with the eyes,
always saying something different. People who have seen a blue dog painting always remember it. It's
really about life, about humankind searching for answers. The dog never changes position,
he just stares at you and you're looking at him, looking for some answers, maybe asking
"Why are we here?" and he's just looking back at you, wondering the same thing. The dog doesn't know
you can see this longing in his eyes, this longing for love and for answers. Blue Dog started
travelling through America and became very popular. The Blue Dog was made extremely popular in America
by Absolut Vodka in 1992 when Rodrigue was honored as an Absolut vodka artist, joining famous
artists such as Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Hans Godo Frable. The Blue Dog was used by both
big brands, Absolut vodka and Xerox, both promoting Blue Dog through a national advertisement campaign.
George also designed marketing material for the New Orleans jazz and heritage festival,
which featured portraits of Louis Armstrong, Pete Fountain and Al Hirt. He painted the Blue Dog with
presidents, the Blue Dog inside an Andy Warhol soup can, Blue Dog with Marilyn Monroe, and Blue
Dog exploring American culture and achievements. This catapulted George Rodrigue to fame and
led to many other commissions, including the president of the United States, Bill Clinton.
George Rodriguez demonstrated his patriotism often within his paintings. In the book "The Cajuns
of George Rodrigue" he wrote "I have a series of paintings showing the American flag to reveal the
great national pride of the Acasian." He wanted to be a part of something, he wanted a country,
he wanted to be American. Critics were not always impressed, saying George was simply riding the
wave of Pop art to achieve quick fame, but George Rodrigue did not care. He simply said "You have to
do something that really attracts the attention. I didn't start out doing that but I have an audience
and it's great." George kept on painting his Cajun culture scenes as well. He painted the Aioli dinner
a few times. He even included it in one of his Xerox adverts with a tagline "A family business".
He also couldn't resist including the Blue Dog into his own personal copy of the Aioli dinner.
He said there was a space for the Blue Dog on the front lawn. All these years with his success,
George Rodrigue established his art galleries in California, and two in Louisiana, Lafayette and
New Orleans. Blue Dog became a commercial success, appearing on various merchandise
such as pins, jewelries, shirts, bumper stickers, and pillows. In 2005 a massive hurricane hit George's
beloved city, New Orleans in Louisiana. It was a devastating disaster with over 18 000 deaths
and 152 billion dollars of damages. George Rodrigue was forced to relocate temporarily.
Days after the disaster he created "We will rise again" depicting the American flag and Blue Dog,
covered with water. The Blue Dog is partly submerged. Instead of its usual yellow eyes,
its eyes are now red, with a broken heart. The red cross on the dog's chest calls out for
help like an SOS distress signal. George printed and signed thousands of posters of "We will rise"
to raise money for the red cross. He also painted "You can't drown the blues"
for fundraising in the wake of hurricane Katrina. Rodrigue's Blue Dog posters raised hundreds
of thousands of dollars for relief efforts. In 2007 the Dixon gallery hosted a 40-year Rodrigue
retrospective exhibition which traveled in 2008 to the New Orleans museum of art.
Rodrigue was awarded an honorary doctorate at The University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2009.
He has been awarded many accolades since. In 2010 a really tall three-dimensional sculpture of his dog
was installed at a busy intersection. It instantly became one of the New Orleans' best known public
artworks. In 2009 Rodrigue formed the George Rodrigue foundation of the Arts, a non-profit
organization advocating the importance of the visual arts in children's development. The program
at the foundation includes an annual scholarship art contest. The foundation also donates art
supplies to schools in Louisiana. In October 2013 George and his wife Wendy told the media
that Rodrigue had been diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. The tumor has spread through his body.
A possible cause could have been the spray Rodrigue used to seal his canvases.
He often used this toxic varnish inside an unventilated studio. On December the 14th of 2013
artist George Rodrigue died at the age of 69. The value of Rodrigue's works has continued to
rise after his death. In April 2015 the Neal auction company of New Orleans sold the Blue
Dog painting for 137 000 dollars. Some were rumored to have sold for 10 times that value.
And now you know the deeper meaning behind the Blue Dog of George Rodrigue.
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