You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
Guess what will What's that Mango?
So you know that painting of dogs playing poker, like the ones where dogs are drinking and playing cards.
You know, it's funny. I was at a thrift store the other day with my son William, and I actually think I saw a puzzle of that painting right there in the store, so I should have bought it for.
This that's amazing. So I don't know if I told you this, but like when I was in high school, my dad saw that painting for the first time, and he was so delighted by it, and he couldn't stop talking about it. He was like, can you believe that a bulldog is cheating? It's so ridiculous, it's crazy. He
just kept talking about it for a few weeks. And then one day I came home and I looked above my dog Lupinese dogbed, and he had framed a print of it and put it above her cage because he won make sure she had some art in the house too.
Just so ludicrous. Yeah, it's so sweet though, too. I mean, your family's always been pretty dog obsessed.
Though, right, Yeah, I mean, we always used to joke that I would have to put a jacket on when I entered the house because my dog was super fluffy, and my parents kept the house super cold so that she was comfortable. Like it didn't matter if my sister and I were comfortable, but as long as my dog
was comfortable, everything was okay. But thinking about that artwork over my dog's cage and the fact that apparently it sold at auction in twenty fifteen for seven hundred thousand dollars or close to seven hundred thousand dollars like learning, that made me want to look into the origins of the painting war and learn more about the artists. So that's what we're doing this week, talking about dogs playing poker.
Let's dive in. Hey their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and is always I'm joined by my good friend Mangesh hot Ticketter and sitting behind that studio booth, I was looking forward to this one that day. I couldn't wait to see what Dylan would be doing. And he is not disappointing. He is dancing like I have never seen him dance before, and he's blasting the song poker Face. I have to admit I sort of called this. He is a huge Lady Gaga fan.
But that's our palain producer, Dylan Fagan.
I think he said he wanted to play that song on repeat to inspire us, But I'm pretty sure the disco ball and the strobe light are more for him than for us.
There is no question about that, all right, mego, So, I know we're both dog lovers, and we both like art, and so I guess this episode is sort of the Venn diagram of those interests. So let's talk dogs playing poker absolutely.
So. The first thing I wanted to bring up is that when you hear that phrase dogs playing poker, we probably pictured the same thing, right, like that picture of a bunch of dogs at a poker table, this bulldog cheating by handing an ace under the table to his pal, another bulldog. But dogs playing Poker isn't actually one painting.
It's kind of the shorthand that's applied to a group of eighteen paintings, all by a New York artist named Cassius Marcellus Coolidge or Cash Coolidge, and the painting that we're most familiar with, though one with that cheating dog is called a Friend in Need, but the one that kicked off the whole series is actually called Poker Game.
It depicts four large, brown and white dogs sitting around a poker table and one is smoking a cigar, one has a pipe, one has a cigarette, and they've all got a bottle of whiskey between them.
Which that last part that's why you know it's ridiculous because most dogs, I'm pretty sure jen drinkers.
Yeah. Well, Poker Game was really well received at the time. Some cigar companies reproduced it to decorate their cigar boxes, but this led to even more dog paintings being commissioned. So in nineteen oh three, the publishing company Brown and Bigelow from Minnesota actually paid Coolidge to paint sixteen more dog paintings.
So, like, why did they need so many paintings of dogs?
Yeah, that's a good question, But basically they wanted to slap them on like calendars or ads or posters that sort of thing. And Coolidge's dogs, it turns out, were pretty versatile. Like they weren't just hanging out drinking whiskey and playing cards. Sometimes they were playing baseball, or football or fixing a car. One painting is even of a bunch of dogs in the courtroom pleading a case.
So I guess my next question is what drove Cash Coolidge to paint all those dogs doing human stuff?
I mean, obviously, in the case of the sixteen paintings, it was the money and the commissioning. But ah, the first one, Poker Game, he just painted that on his own, and I didn't realize how long ago he started this series. Poker Game was created in eighteen ninety four. While it's unknown where he got the idea, it's not just like
thrown together haphazardly. The image is a composition that's inspired by Caravaggio, George de Latour, and Paul Saisan, all who have their own depictions of card game scenes, albeit with you know, humans of their subjects rather than dogs. But some have compared Coolidge's A Friend in Need with this English artist Sir Edwin Lancier's painting. He did one called Laying Down the Law in eighteen forty, and both works feature dogs gathered around pensively, kind of acting like people,
card players in Coolidge's one, and lawyers and lanciers. However, if you look at Coolidge's painting. It's kind of lighter in tone, slightly more comical. And actually, I'm just going to send you these images so you can see the difference.
Yeah, you know, I mean, I see what you're saying that Coolidges is slightly more comical. But I mean they're both kind of silly paintings of dogs doing human stuff.
Yeah, I mean that it's true for sure, But now, I mean that's what's happening. Yeah. You know, while Coolidge wasn't the first to do this type of work, he's definitely the most prolific, and he kind of took the idea and ran with it in a way that no one else had.
I feel like we need to back up, though, because you know, there must be something interesting about the upbringing of someone who eventually spends a lifetime painting dogs. So let's look into his background.
That sounds great. So Cash Coolidge was born September eighteenth, eighteen forty four to a prosperous Quaker family in Antwerp, New York. The family had a lot of land, they were into farming, and so he grows up really well educated. But he's not just a painter. Before he painted dogs, he'd already done all these other things. In eighteen seventy one, he founded the first bank in Antwerp. He opened and then sold several pharmacies in upstate New York. He also
founded his hometown's first newspaper, the Antwerp News. So he's really got a lot on his resume.
I mean, the guy is prettyccomplished. I didn't see the bank thing coming, like, that's just such an interesting background.
Yeah, finance is really where the dog inspiration comes from. But in eighteen seventy three, Coolidge went to Europe and that's kind of what kicked off his career as a travel writer but also as an artist. He had a travel column at the time for the Watertown Times called Cash's Column two k's weirdly in the alliteration there. But to supplement his income, he also worked as a cartoonist
for local newspapers, and he also gave penmanship lessons. But he had this growing side hustle as a lightning sketcher. And this is the thing they used to do where people paid up to fifty cents for the privilege of watching an artist do these super speed sketches of a series of people sitting for portraits.
I mean it sounds a little bit like those quick caricatures you can see and get when you're on a boardwalk or something like that, where they give you a huge head and you're on a skateboard for some reason.
Yeah, it's always a skateboard. But one Rochester news paper from the time actually wrote about this incredible event that took place at a local Masonic lodge.
Did you say Masonic lodge?
Yeah, So we're going to get into that later. But the paper said, the celebrated artist CM Coolidge, known to the public under the nom de plume Cash, will give an entertainment in offhand caricaturing, in which branch of art he has no superior. We have had the personal pleasure of witnessing mister Coolidge as skilled in this line, and can most heartily recommend him to the public.
I mean, it sounds like he was pretty successful. He's probably the best big head on a skateboard artist around.
Yeah, and this is even before his dog paintings. So Coolidge had a pretty good career as an artist, doing illustrations for newspapers and magazines. He was also doing things like ads for shoe companies. He was making good money, but none of his other work really sticks in the American psyche the way those dogs sitting around smoking and drinking and playing cards do.
Yeah, I mean, there's something very funny about the paintings, but there's also something a little bit dark about them, Like it looks like the are getting away with something each time, like they snuck out of their little dog houses in the middle of the night to blow off some steam without the supervision of their owners. Like you get what I'm saying here, I do.
And the fact that the dogs are gambling is very illicit, especially for dogs.
Yeah, yes, that's definitely controversial for dogs and for humans too. But you know, at the time, gambling was actually illegal or technically illegal, And according to Lucy Sante's Low Life, an amazing book about New York's Lower East Side, in the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds, tammany hallback syndicates quote handled protection for gambling establishments, so that meant the highest ranked city officials in New York City were
facilitating these illegal gambling halls. This included Mayor Robert Van Wick, and that was obviously controversial because at the same time, people like the city's DA that was a man named William Travers. Jerome had made it his personal mission to end gambling the city.
Which sounds like a huge conflict. So does that play out publicly at all?
It definitely does. So you've got Jerome. He starts staging raids on these gambling houses and making sure that he gets as much publicity as possible by inviting reporters to come along. Also, to make the whole thing extra dramatic, he personally wields a hatchet to break down doors. So pretty dramatic. That sounds ridiculous, Yeah, but it was all over the papers and really in the zeitgeist at the time. Like this guy named al Adams. He was a widely
disliked policy king. He owned two breweries, one hundred saloons, and two million dollars in real estate, and allegedly had a steak in every gambling house between Battery and one hundred and tenth Street. So he was eventually arrested. He was sentenced to eighteen months in sing sing. But if you're an adult in New York at the time, you're probably reading about these gambling raids every day in the newspaper. It's kind of like the backdrop of everybody's life at
the time. But also, if you're a man, you're probably even attending some of these underground card games, and so Coolidge's works are kind of this wink to the viewer because the card scenes are both depicting something illegal but also playful and absurd, like the games are going to take place whether you like it or not, and whether dog owners know about it or not.
I mean that's interesting. It's like Colige is saying chill Out is just a card game right.
Well, and by using dogs as a stand in for humans, it all seems pretty non threatening. I mean, who's going to raid a late night dog party? Like, let the dogs be dogs, you know, we always say that.
We always say that. I like how we're acting like dogs drinking whiskey and betting with poker chips as dogs being dogged.
Yeah, dog, let them be dogs. You know.
It's also worth men saying that the Dog's Playing Poker series is very much a boys club, Like there's one painting in the series where a bunch of angry female dogs storm in to break up their husband's card game like a marital police raid. And also coolidge state of bachelor until his sixties. So as much as this might have been like a light political statement, he was very much, as our researcher Mary points out, a dude making art for his fellow dudes, speaking of which we should talk
about the Masons. But before we do that, why don't we take a quick break.
Welcome back to part time Genius, where we're talking about dogs, playing poker and doing other human stuff too. Of course, so, mege, I think you were going to tell us about the artist Cash Coolidge's connection to Mason's or Masonic lodges. I know you'd mentioned earlier that he used to do speed drawing events at them.
Yeah, so the Masonic stuff mostly goes back to one of the paintings Coolidge produced as part of his commission from Brown and Bigelow. It's called Riding the Goat, and it depicts a blindfolded dog riding a goat in front of this proving audience of other dogs.
That's a little.
Weird, Yeah, just the normal stuff you'd see at a dog park. But unlike the poker game paintings, which are more obviously relatable, the details Coolidge included in this painting are pretty odd, Like some dogs are wearing special circular hats. They're sitting at high desks, they're recording everything. One dog is wearing a pointy hat, a masquerade mask, and a cape. And there's a blindfolded dog riding the goat. He actually has a rope around his neck which is being held by a cocker spaniel.
It's starting to sound a little eyes wide shut to be honest with you.
Yeah, it wouldn't be out of place in that movie except for all the dogs. But the part of the reason this is depicted this way is that cast Coolidge was definitely in the Freemason so that part's not a secret, but it's possible he included some mason imagery kind of as a joke for his friends. There's a site called dogs Playing Poker dot org, which is actually an amazing resource.
It's made by a computer programmer named Joe, and he spoke to an anonymous mason who actually broke down the painting symbolism for the audience, and so this is what the mason said. Quote Riding the Goat depicts one of the first three principal degrees of free masonry. The blindfold is an important part of the first three degrees and has a specific and symbolic meaning in each degree. The rope around his neck is called a cable toe. Another
important Masonic symbol. The three dogs sitting to the left at the desk indicate the three principal officers of any Masonic lodge. The dog to the right is wearing a red cap. In Scottish right Masonry, this cap is the emblem of a kcch Mason. I'm not sure exactly what that is, but clearly something of importance. And some dogs are wearing blue caps, a symbol that represents a fifty year Mason, meaning dogs or people I guess who've been initiated fifty or more years ago.
I mean, it definitely feels very insidery.
Yeah, but Kolitch also might have put in all that imagery kind of as a joke for his fellow Masons. Basically, there were old rumors that Mason's rode goats as a form of initiation, and by Coolidge's time, Mason's had turned that accusation into an inside joke.
So I guess he just used this thing he was getting paid to make as an opportunity to joke around with his boys.
Basically, but Coolidge was a real creative force, and he did more than just paint dogs, doing things like he really enjoyed making all kinds of art. And you know those like plywood cutouts that you stick your face through.
Like like the ones you'd see at a carnival or an amusement park something like that.
Yeah, and boardwalks too, right, cash Coolidge patented those. He called them comic foregrounds, and he created all these different drawings to be used as the fake foregrounds. He actually only patented a very specific version of these cutouts, ones that had an image of a person with their normal head but the sketch of a very tiny body. So there were no strong man or bikini body ones, which is ridiculous. But it's amazing to me that he's behind
those and also illustrated tons of books. He wrote a play, he wrote a comic opera.
I mean, this guy's all over the place, like from starting a bank to writing an opera, Like if this guy's done everything.
I mean it's also weird stuff like the opera was called King gall Nipper and it was about the marital and the morris adventures of human tourists in the realm of the King of the Mosquitoes.
No, but It is kind of crazy that Coolidge was so prolific and has done so many interesting things, but the only thing he's really remembered for is his dog art. And actually nobody remembers him. We just remember the dogs.
Yeah, I mean, people do love dogs. But you know, the nineteenth century was sort of a golden age of dog art, and so this is the generation before Coolidge. There's an artist named maud Earl and when Lancer who we mentioned before, Arthur Wardle and John Sargent Noble, and they were all artists commissioned by Queen Victoria to make dog art. Apparently she liked many of us, was really
into dogs and particularly Pomeranians. But Lancer painted dozens of Queen Victoria's pets and was rewarded with the Knighthood for the work, so, you know, pretty fancy. Also, this thing trickles down because the Queen's into it and royals are into it, Suddenly the middle classes into it as well, and by the end of the Victorian era, English homes were full of reproductions of his dog paintings.
I feel like this was just the golden age of dog art. I mean, what a time to be alive. Mango.
Yeah. I mean the DVC review of this twenty twenty three exhibition of dog art actually shed some light on why dogs in particular are fascinators so much. This is how the review puts it. Dogs are borderline creatures on the threshold of two worlds, the human and the animal. We see human qualities like faithfulness, empathy, and intelligence mirrored in canine behavior, but we also admired dog's sensory superpowers,
and they're more instinctive connection with the wild. We've always been infatuated with dogs because we consider them in betweeners, half mirrors of our own behavior and half windows into the mysteries of nature.
I mean, I do like Coolidge's ability to sort of tap into this existing human fascination but then put his own spin on it.
I mean, his generation of work is kind of more pop culture in a way. It's made for everyone, and Mason's too. But the funny thing is that his wife and daughter were never really into dogs. They were more cat people.
That's pretty ridiculous. I mean, it's funny though. Coolidge's work have this light hearted element, but he's not painting for the Queen, and I think a lot of people would describe Coolidge's Dogs Playing Poker series as kitchy.
Can you explain that a little more?
Well, I actually have this in my notes. When you go to the Wikipedia article for kitch, the first image at the top of the page is of a friend in need and the caption says a common example of modern kitch.
Oh, that's interesting, So how are we defining kitch exactly?
So? Merriam Webster defines kitch as something that appeals to popular or lowbrow taste and is often of poor quality, attacky or lowbrow quality or condition. And like, you're insulting my dog's artwork here, But yeah, I know, it's just it's terrible. But it's also used ironically or with enough self awareness that it can boomerang back around to actually being a compliment.
How can it be a compliment?
Well, apparently the word emerged in the art markets of Munich, and this was in the eighteen sixties and eighteen seventies, describing cheap and popular pictures and sketches. And it might derive from the German word kitchen, which means to smear, or from the German verb vert kitchen, which means to cheapen. But you know, the most interesting theory is that it could be an inversion of the French word chic, which basically means fashionable.
Oh, that's funny that kitch is like cheek backwards.
And when it's used in certain context, kitsch is definitely an insult and it can definitely feel cheap. And some examples of classic kitsch are Santa Claus in the supermarket pictures of poodles with ribbons in their hair, souvenir snow glow. But then artists kind of inverted the idea and embraced it. So think about people like Andy Warhol with his Marilyn Monroe or Chairman Mau Prince, or Jeff Coons with his balloon dog sculptures, those sorts of things.
So what do we think dogs playing poker is like? Is it Jeff Coons or snow globe?
You know, it's kind of tough to say. In nineteen thirty nine, the art critic Clement Greenberg wrote a famous essay titled Avant Garde and Kitsch. It was done more to influence American ideas about kitch than anything else. So he basically says that urbanization and modern capitalism robs people of the time and space they need to engage with authentic art, and that kitsch or commercial art arose as a cheap replacement. And this was to occupy people's minds
and the little freedom that they do have. And he also says, quote, kitsch is mechanical and operates by formulas.
I guess you could argue that like dogs playing poker does just that. Like Coolidge hit a nerve with his first painting poker game and then he basically plugged in a formula scenes of dogs doing very human things, which turned into commerce.
Yeah, no, that's totally it. But Greenberg also says this about kitch. He says, now and then it produces something of merit, something that has an authentic folk flavor.
Yeah, these days, Coolidge's dog painting sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, so it's kind of safe to say he's transcended the average flea market level of kitch.
Yeah.
Plus, I feel like dogs playing Poker has worked its way deep into our consciousness. There are multiple dogs playing Poker references on the Simpsons. There was a two thousand crime thriller starring Tim Curry called Four Dogs Playing Poker. And you know that old SNL sketch where the Wild and Crazy guys of course, in their very first appearance on the show, there's a frame print of a Friend in Need that's hanging on their apartment wall.
God, that's amazing. It's so funny to imagine those guys whose only interest was quote getting chicks, buying art for their apartment, and settling on dogs playing poker to attract chicks.
Yeah, I feel like women see dogs playing poker and just swoon.
Oh yeah, does it every time? You know? I actually love this little anecdote about Gary Larson. Of course, you know the cartoonists behind the Far Side comics, So he drew a Far Side cartoon where he imagined the dogs playing poker. Artist earlier in his career painting giraffes, chickens and other animals playing poker, but he didn't think the artist's name was well known, so he randomly named him
Gus Nickerson. And then years later he read an article about cash Coolidge and he learned more about them, and he said, quote, if you think about it, a Friend in Need is arguably as famous in this country as the Mona Lisa by what's his name? I just didn't give Koolie his proper due so good.
That's such a huge endorsement. And I love Gary Larson so much. I love that, you know, he's this incredible illustrator and cultural commentator giving big ups to another artist. But you know, one thing I keep thinking about. It must be hard to shuffle cards with no thumbs.
You know, That's the one detail I've enough to be able to swallow like it's just not realistic, Mango.
I know we'll never get over that, But how about we end on a little fact off.
All right, let's do it? All right? So we mentioned earlier that Coolidge's most famous painting often gets mistitled as dogs playing poker, but you could just as easily call it dogs cheating at poker, because if you look closely, only two of the seven dogs at the table seem to be playing fair. The rest are either shiftily glancing at each other's hands or straight up passing cards under the table.
One thing I learned this week is that dogs really do cheat at poker, or at least they can with the proper training. And this is thanks to a technique called hand targeting. A dog can be trained to use his mouth to select a single playing card from someone's hand and then give that card to another player. So, in theory, someone could cheat at poker by using dogs to pass cards under the table, just like in Coolidge's paintings.
All right, well here's a quick one. In the early two thousands, Value Soft Inc. Released a PC poker game pattern off of Coolidge's paintings, and it was called, of course, Dogs Playing Poker. The high stakes poker simulator featured a cast of eighteen canine opponents for the player to face off against, including a dalmatian, a mechanical dog, an ancient dinosaur dog, and what appears to be a cat wearing a sign that says a dog, which I think is
pretty fun. The game didn't hang around on shelves for long, but intrepid poker hounds should still be able to sniff it out online without too much trouble.
So when I think of Richard Nixon, I think about the first president to ban soup from the White House dinners, and also someone who used to call up Christian Latner when he was a college basketball player to give him advice at halftime. And of course I guess this watergate too. But did you know that Richard Nixon was an excellent poker player. Apparently he was so good that most of his first political campaign was funded by winnings from his time in the navy.
Ah, that's a good one. Actually, speaking of presidents playing poker, this is a funny one. According to the Lewis and Sun Paper, President Harding once bet the entire set of White House China in a poker game to General MacArthur's wife Louise and lost it to her.
That's incredible. Did you know that at the Angola Prison rodeo there's an event called convict Poker, which is more like bulls playing poker, but apparently four inmates sit at a table playing cards in the ring and then a bull is released and the last man to leave the table wins, which sounds terrifying.
Yeah, that's interesting. I didn't know about that all right. So getting back a little closer to dogs playing poker,
here's the fact I've found about cats playing poker. So it turns out that by the time Coolidge began his series on dogs playing poker, British illustrator Lewis Wayne had already spent several years anthropomorphizing cats for the London crowd and his fansful style depicted cats walking on their hind legs, wearing clothes, partaking in all sorts of social activities normally reserved for humans, like golfing and celebrating Christmas, drinking cocktails,
and yes, even playing cards. So it's worth noting though, that Wayne's cats didn't restrict themselves to just poker. They were also avid bridge players too, which feels very cat.
Like and very classy.
Yeah.
So here's the thing that I learned, which is just insane to be Do you know that there's a real dog ashiba you knew named peanut Butter, the first dog to speed run a video game at a twenty twenty four Games Done Quick charity event. Peanut Butter used a custom made controller. The dog was able to input commands from his owner and successfully clear all twenty five levels
of the nineteen eighty five nes game gyro Mighte. It took peanut Butter twenty six minutes and twenty four seconds to beat the game, which was just over two minutes slower than the fastest human time on record, and in the month since the event, both peanut Butter and a husky named Coda have now surpassed that record, finishing the game in right around twenty three minutes.
That is wild and unfortunately I don't think I can beat a fact about video game playing dog. So yeah, I think you win this one, Mango, I fold.
I love it. Well. That's it for today as part Time Genius, and next week we're going to be trying something new. We're going to be putting out a few episodes a week, but we do need feedback, so writers at peat Genius, moms at gmail dot com and let us know what you'd like, what you want to hear, anything else that's on your mind. And you can also find us on Instagram at part Time Genius. Again, we reopened that account and are taking messages there. So from Mary, Gabe, Dylan,
Will and myself, thank you so much for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted by Will Pearson and me Mongaishatikler and research by our good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay, Trustee Dara Potts, and Vinny Shorey.
For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.