Richard Jackson’s Bad Dog pees on prestigious Californian art collection

Bad Dog

As part of his retrospective at the Orange County Museum of Art, Richard Jackson has installed Bad Dog, a giant temporary sculpture of a black labrador “urinating” yellow paint onto the side of the museum. It was an immediate hit. Crowds flocked to see it, and it quickly gained notoriety among both the local community and the art world. Accessible, vibrant, and playful, the work has widely achieved Jackson’s main intention: to make the viewer laugh. Bad Dog lasted the duration of Jackson’s exhibition Ain’t Painting a Pain, before it toured Europe.

The meaning of the work

The piece calls into question the role of humor in art and can be seen as a self-reflexive commentary on the state of elitism and exclusivity in the art museum world.

About Richard Jackson

Richard Jackson (born 1939) has been a pre-eminent figure on the American art scene since the 70s and is influenced by both abstract expressionism and action painting.