Popular Culture Review Vol. 18, No. 1, Winter 2007 | Page 107

Poker is “Going to the Dogs” 103 Deadvvood, South Dakota, while he was holding aces and eights in a poker game. The common democracy of the game is also shown in Thomas Hart Benton’s 1948 Poker Night, portraying players seeking an escape from the desperate lives they are living. Philip Evergood’s 1936 The Siding, portrays gandy dancers engrossed in poker on a rail side car. Several paintings look westward. Benton’s 1932 Arts of the West, features a game of draw poker, Abraham Rattner shows female players in his expressionist Game of Cards. Colombian Fernando Botero’s The Card Players illustrates three of his prototypical rotund people sitting about a small table with cards in their hands and cards on the table. The hefty sized woman is contemplating a fast move as she is seated upon two cards, aces, we may suspect. “Bluffing”—the passive skill of the player with a “poker face”—is shown by Robin Morris in the 1989 picture of that name. The emotion of play is illustrated in the four faces shown in Poker Game, a 1985 painting by Israel Rubenstein. One has busted, another smugly sits with a royal flush hand, another is squeezing his last chip, and the fourth is dreaming of the card he needs in the draw. Of all the paintings of poker games none are as popular as Cassius Marcellus Coolidge’s nine pieces showing dogs playing poker. Well over a million prints of the paintings (plus six others with dogs playing very human roles) hang al l around the world in pool halls, saloons, and gambling halls, as well as private homes. The paintings put the dogs in various postures showing impending victory, busting, and serious contemplation. The Coolidge works drew inspiration from the style of the Dutch Masters who preceded him by a century; on the other hand, the images offer a surrealism that was not popular for another half century. His work is considered as influential in inspiring the work of Andy Warhol. Coolidge's original “dogs” have sold for as much as $590,000 each, but you need not pay that much to enjoy the fruit of his labors, (http://money.cnn .com/2005/02/16/news/newsmakers/poker_dogs/index.htm?cnn=yes). You can buy a tie with the image of one of his paintings for only $19.95 at the Gambler’s General Store in Las Vegas. They also sell refrigerator magnets for $7.95 and posters for the same price. The Gambler’s Book Store offers “Dogs Playing Poker” calendars for $12.95. But check out your Web and eBay and you can find the following items for sale—each embellished with those poker-playing dogs: