Hello Art Dogs!
I’ve had a jam-packed few weeks—a trip home to California, followed by a pit stop in Vegas for Game 1 of the WNBA finals, and this week we had a big team offsite for Substack in New York. As a result, this edition of Art Dogs is short and sweet. I hope you enjoy it.
Bailey
"Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash," by Giacomo Balla
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti wrote in the founding Futurism manifesto in 1909: “We affirm that the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed.”
Three years later, Futurist artist Giacomo Balla painted this Dachshund with his owner on a walk.
I love this painting. I can almost hear the dog’s toenails click clacking on the ground when I look at it, one of the things I miss most about Iggy (my ex’s dog). The piece conveys the dog’s enthusiasm as well. I always found that so endearing—how overjoyed dogs are by a simple walk.
Interestingly, some of history’s most important artists have owned and drawn, painted, and silk screened their Dachshunds. There’s Picasso’s Lump, Hockney’s Stanley and Boodgie, and Warhol’s Archie and Amos.
For me, none of those big dogs’ representations of their beloved pets match the charm of this piece by Giacomo Balla—an artist I’d never heard of from a movement we’ve all but forgotten.
To that I say, bravo, Giacomo.
See you next time,
Bailey
Art Dogs is a weekly dispatch introducing the pets—dogs, yes!, but also cats, lizards, marmosets, and more—that were kept by our favorite artists. Subscribe to receive these weekly posts to your email inbox.
These images and the energy even in the static pups is everything. Wonderful
Yes! Adore this painting — the tightly cropped perspective is everything.