Dogs and Modernism.

I just finished reading Natalia’s book, Chasing the Perfect and I started thinking about how dogs fit into the modernist dogma. Her dog, Janie, is an underlying, constant presence in this book, and it got me pondering. When you think of the modernist aesthetic, dogs are really the antithesis of it. They’re messy, smelly, and could easily poke holes in a leather Barcelona chair. They’re also very unpredictable and would never, EVER fit neatly into any sort of a grid, let alone a Swiss one.

How funny it was, then, to get the recent Design (Not) Within Reach catalog, where one of William Wegman’s Weimaraners is featured on the cover. So maybe dogs – of a highly-cultivated, specific aesthetic – do fit the modernist regime? I’ve been looking for dogs in architecture and design magazines (ID, Dwell, Design Within Reach, for example) and so far, the only breed I’ve noticed in named magazines is the Weimaraner. Is it because they’re short-haired, clean, muscular and sleek, and uniquely colored? I could see the Viszla being another dog that might fit this assumed Modernist criteria, but if Wegman were a photographic connoisseur of, say….Golden Retrievers…or…big, hairy Bernese Mountain Dogs…or smelly, oily Chesapeake Bay Retrievers, would D(N)WR have one of those dogs on the cover or risk long dog hair and accompanying dog slobber all over their model living rooms? Hmmmm, makes me wonder. It would be interesting to do a demographic study on designers and their dogs, just to see if there’s any correlation. And designers who don’t like dogs in the first place, no matter what the breed? Well, I already have my theories about that.