Over the centuries, dogs have done a lot more in art than just play poker. More than 7,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers carved leashed dogs into the side of a cliff. Pups are prominently featured in paintings by iconic artists including Lavinia Fontana, Titian, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and John Singer Sargent.
And dogs have a long history as an artist’s best friend: Consider William Wegman’s Weimaraners, Lucian Freud’s whippets, or Georgia O’Keeffe’s chows. Dachshunds seem to be the most popular breed among celebrated artists—Pablo Picasso, David Hockney, and Andy Warhol all had them. (Theirs were named Lump, Stanley, and Archie, respectively.)
A new exhibition at Timothy Taylor in New York, “Dog Days of Summer,” brings together works by dozens of artists depicting our furry friends as ever-faithful companions, studio mates, and muses. (Dogs are welcome at the gallery, and treats will be handed out at the reception desk.)
Some works in the show were created especially for the occasion, like Hilary Pecis’s Mango, 2024, a handsome portrait of a pint-size pup sitting atop a throne of dizzyingly patterned pillows. Others, like Louis Fratino’s intimate 2018 work on paper Man and Dog and Robert Gober’s 1976 photograph of a dog food bag, offer a peek at a more playful side of well-known practices.
To celebrate the paws-itively life-a-fur-ming power of dogs in art, CULTURED has compiled exclusive shots of some of the artists participating in Timothy Taylor’s show, posing with their own very good boys and girls.
“Dog Days of Summer” is on view at Timothy Taylor Gallery in New York through August 23.
