Art Expert Unremitting Failure Squints at: Dogs Playing Poker!

There is unanimous agreement amongst art critics that Dogs Playing Poker is the greatest painting off all time, better even than its companion piece, Jack the Ripper (or as it's sometime referred to, Scratched at Dawn).  Let's face it: next to these masterworks, Guernica is cold mutton.  How many millions of hours  have been spent poring over the exquisite detail of this extraordinary work of magical realism?  We will never know.  Suffice it to say that one can study it for a lifetime and never exhaust its possibilities. This is why we've chosen to study only a detail of the work.  To discuss the work in its entirety would take a thousand critics a thousand years.  In the fragment below, notice the oddly unidentifiable card being passed by toe from one dog to another.  He's cheating!  While smoking a stogie!  No wonder this painting holds pride of place in the pool room/art gallery located in the rear of the VFW in Littlestown, Pennsylvania.  It's stone cold brilliant. 

    

Comments

[mordantmouth]

Umm " unidentifiable"!?!
It's the Ace of clubs!!
Or were you being sarcastic?
We lost our sense of sarcasm in a card game last week.

[Unremitting Failure]

You're right, mordantmouth. But shouldn't there be A's in the top left and bottom right corners? Above little clubs? Agh, I'm too goddamn picky, aren't I? No wonder I don't play poker. I'd spent the whole night questioning the legitimacy of the cards.

[Ben]

It certainly is an intriuing work. I note the unanimity of half empty glasses. Or are they half full?

[Steve]

i have always been so ppreoccupied with what might be in the pipe in the background that i never noticed that ace of Clubs will give ol' Rover what looks to be 4 aces.
Check it out!

[Unremitting Failure]

See! "I never noticed" are the words people always use when talking about this masterwork! Those do appear to be four aces, don't they!

And thanks, Ben, for pointing out that what we're looking at here is both art and philosophy.

[mordantmouth]

Dollars to doughnuts the one smoking the pipe is a scotty.

[Jan Martin Löhndorf]

I don't like dogs, not even in art. Now, this is great - a girl showing us her pussy:
http://www.park2.com/keane/bonnieb1.jpg

[Todd Green]

The most esoteric element of this great work is the towering irony of having dogs play a game where emotions must remain in check. Can you imagine a boxer bluffing, a chow checking and raising, a retriever hiding a royal flush. High humor indeed.