Image via Complex Original
Dogs have always occupied a huge part of our cultural imagination—as companions, pets, hunters, and heroes. They have also played the part of muse throughout the ages, posing for portraits or playing supporting roles in visual compositions. From 16th-century oil paintings to contemporary sculptures by Jeff Koons and Paul McCarthy, these are The Best Artist Depictions of Dogs. All hail man's best friend.
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Keith Haring, Barking Dogs in the Series "Pop Shop IV" (1989)
Barking Dogs is one of the silkscreen prints in Haring's "Pop Shop IV" series. Like many of the artist's creations, this work is made up of recognizable symbols that can be read like an urban tribal language.
Banksy, Choose Your Weapon Yellow (2010)
Filled with the irreverent wit that we've come to expect in Banksy's pieces, this screenprint by the elusive street artist features a reference to Keith Haring's iconic dog.
Jean Pigozzi, Diane and Jean Pigozzi, Geneva, Switzerland, 1991 (1991)
This photograph highlights a dog's endearing sense of play. It evokes the intimate relationship between dog and owner with the pup trapped between the photographer's legs. The image is characteristic of Pigozzi's work, which reveals a world that is normally undocumented, unremarkable, or hidden from sight.
Camila Soato, Dialogismos mixurucas nº50 (2014)
Dogs are a recurring subject in Soato's sparse paintings, which often depict the furry creatures getting it on doggy style. Soato paints in thick impasto on unprimed canvas and leaves much of her surface unfinished to give a sketchy aesthetic to her humorous scenes.
Andy Warhol, Portrait of Maurice (1976)
Portrait of Maurice was a commissioned portrait for Gabrielle Keiller. Andy Warhol used synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas, along with Polaroids of Maurice, in order to create this piece. Warhol himself was also a dachshund owner.
Pentti Sammallahti, Varanasi, India, (Puppy sleeping on cow) (1999)
Taken in black-and-white, this photo depicts an intimate scene between animals in India. Besides the color contrast, Sammallahti also plays with the difference in size between his subjects. Inspired by his Swedish-born grandmother, who was a newspaper photographer, Sammallahti started taking pictures at age 11.
Rob Pruitt, Feels Like Love/Safe Place (2010)
This piece strides the line between high and low. Altering a 2001 photograph of a dog with graphics that look more appropriate on Snapchat than in an art gallery, Pruitt introduces a new form of Pop Art that pulls not from brand labels, but from social media.
C. M. Coolidge, Dogs Playing Poker (1903)
Dogs Playing Poker is part of a series of 16 oil paintings by C. M. Coolidge that feature dogs in human scenarios. The nine most-reproduced paintings in the series all feature dogs seated around a card table. The first customers of Coolidge's Dogs Playing Poker paintings were cigar companies, which printed copies of the paintings as giveaways.
Ed Ruscha, Dog (1994)
Ruscha's work is an exercise in representation. The image depicts a dog's silhouette, which stands in for the real animal—just like a painting stands in for reality.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Dog (1982)
The obsessive scribbling style of Dog is typical of the artist's aesthetic. While many of Basquiat's subjects are drawn from his Caribbean heritage, Dog is less visibly linked to this influence. Nonetheless, the simple composition portrays a rabid energy found in many of Basquiat's paintings.
Winslow Homer, Hound and Hunter (1892)
Painted by one of the best-known painters of outdoor American life, this 19th-century oil painting shows a boy who has just shot and killed a deer. The boy attempts to get the deer's corpse ashore before it sinks, and the dog has no way of helping him. This scene is rich in drama without overly romanticizing the hunter or the deer.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Hunters in the Snow (1565)
The Hunters in the Snow is a 16th-century painting by Flemish master Pieter Bruegel the Elder and is one of a series of six, each depicting a different time of year. The painting shows a winter scene of returning hunters and their dogs. In this particular piece, the colors are a range of muted whites and grays, the trees are bare of leaves, and the day is cold and overcast. The painting is often categorized under the Northern Renaissance movement.
Lara Jo Regan, Untitled Photo From the Series "Dogs in Cars" (2013)
LA-based photographer Lara Jo Regan has turned her attention to capturing the delight and excitement of dogs riding in cars. These candid photographs of dogs with their fur and tongues blowing in the wind are full of joy.
Hellen Van Meene, Untitled #395 (2012)
Like many of Hellen van Meene's photographs that feature adolescents, this saturated chromogenic print captures two young girls next to two basset hounds. The image portrays an awkward tenderness despite its elegant composition.
William Wegman, Blue Period With Banjo (1980)
The king of dog photography, William Wegman gives a nod to Picasso's Blue Period, even going as far as to include the Spanish painter's The Old Guitarist in the photograph. While dog photography may not be considered high art in some spheres, Wegman challenges that notion by aligning his work with Picasso's.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Head of a Dog (1870)
This 19th-century oil painting deviates from Pierre-Auguste Renoir's typical works. The artist, who is among the first group of French Impressionist painters, is best known for portraiture, figurative work, and his series of voluptuous bathing women.
Yoshitomo Nara, Untitled (Dog With Headphones)
Nara's Japanese anime style marks this sketch of a dog. While his characters are often sinister or angry, this pup seems content to groove to his music.
Fernando Botero, Poodle (1971)
In classic Botero style, the poodle depicted in this portrait is of exaggerated proportions, not unlike the so-called "fat" figures in many of the artist's paintings and sculptures.
Nam June Paik, Dog (1995)
Not your typical furry friend, this is a piece by Nam June Paik, a.k.a. the Father of Video Art. Given his nickname, it's not surprising that Dog would contain a television and a video player.
Louise Bourgeois, NATURE STUDY (1984)
This bronze and polished patina sculpture lacks a face and is not immediately discernible as an actual dog. With protruding breasts and an erect phallus, the crouching canine appears neither male nor female, neither beast nor man. It was made by the artist when she was 73, during one of the most accomplished periods of her life. Bourgeois describes the piece as a "portrait of herself and her relationship with motherhood."
M. C. Escher, Regular Division of The Plane (1957)
Regular Division of the Plane is a series of drawings based on the principle of tessellation, which consists of irregular shapes or combinations of shapes interlocking with one another to cover the entire surface or plane.
Desire Obtain Cherish, We Are Known by the Company We Keep (2014)
Desire Obtain Cherish is a leading contemporary sculptor whose work combines pop art, street art, conceptual art, and appropriation art to explore societal obsessions with debauchery, prestige, the media, and fame. He works with a variety of media to create art that validates as well as critiques the cycle of consumerism. His pseudonym is itself an allusion to this cycle.
Picasso, Boy With a Dog (1905)
This painting is regarded either as a study of one of Picasso's circus paintings of 1905 or as an original variation of the motif. With soft, blue-gray tones and strokes of pink, this poignant piece captures the melancholy of the young boy.
Jeff Koons, Balloon Dog (Orange) (1990s)
Jeff Koons' larger-than-life, shiny balloon dogs look like souvenir balloon animals that clowns make at birthday parties, making him the "World's Most Expensive Birthday Clown." The Balloon Dog sold for $58.4 million last year, the most expensive piece of art ever sold by a living artist. The viewer sees his own reflection in the sculpture, which conveys the idea that the viewer is like a balloon, and a balloon is like the viewer, according to Koons: "You take a breath and you inhale, it's an optimism. You exhale, and it's kind of a symbol of death."
Paul McCarthy, Balloon Dog (2013)
McCarthy's massive, 80-foot-tall Balloon Dog, which was exhibited at Frieze New York last year, looks like a version of Jeff Koons' dog series with the same name. Unlike Koons' work, McCarthy's dog is actually an inflatable balloon, a cheeky parody of Koons' work.