George Rodrigue’s first painting with people is his Aioli Dinner of 1971. The scene is an all-male gourmet dinner club that met monthly from 1890-1920 on the lawn of large homes in and around Rodrigue’s hometown of New Iberia, Louisiana. The women, standing in the back row, cooked; the young men, standing along the sides, served; and the men, each with their own bottle of wine, enjoyed the meal. The faces of the men and boys are actual portraits based on photographs from that time and include Rodrigue’s grandfather and uncle.
For years Rodrigue struggled to create an effective print of Aioli Dinner. The ground, especially, went black in the printing. In 1992, using a photographic technique called Direct Image Transfer, he made a copy of the painting on masonite and repainted it on top, creating greater contrasts within the work. Using this ‘new’ Aioli Dinner, he finally achieved a successful series of silkscreen prints. Rodrigue kept the repainted Aioli Dinner for himself, added the Blue Dog in the foreground, and renamed the painting, Eat, Drink and Forget the Blues.
See the original 1971 painting, “Aioli Dinner,”currently on view at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans. See a related video narrative with a detailed history of the painting, filmed at the Ogden, here- “Aioli Dinner” by George Rodrigue