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After Man Ray's death, Wegman concentrated on other mediums: drawings, one-sitting short stories with odd endings ("They sort of came out of the typewriter," he explains) and, again despite his manifesto, painting. The paintings are the redheaded stepchild of the Wegman oeuvre -- largely neglected, they travel from gallery to gallery, while the rest of his work steals all the attention. They're as eerie and difficult as the photographs are pleasing and immediate. Still, I get the sense that he prefers their company. Several of them lean against the wall in the studio/playroom -- he has cited wallpaper as an influence, especially the out-of-register kind, like the pirate wallpaper in his childhood bedroom. The most wallpapery one of all has a blue background; planes, boats and seagulls float on it. As Wegman talks about his own childhood, how he didn't meet his father until he was 2 (George Wegman's B-17 was shot down, and he was kept in a German POW camp until the Liberation in 1945), I get a quick glimpse into the pull of the haunting and simple painting. I believe Wegman when, a few moments later, he claims that he has shaken off what he learned in art school, that he now paints the things that inspired him before he learned what art was and wasn't, when he was 3 and 4. Three years after the death of Man Ray, Wegman was happily absorbed in this sort of painting. The one thing he didn't want was another dog. But in 1985, he visited a litter of puppies and fell in love with a cinnamon one he called Fay Ray, so he revised his sentiment to a vow not to photograph her. In retrospect, there is something Jack-in-the-Beanstalky about all of these demurrals, as if Wegman were ready to throw the magic beans out the back window. But this time there was a new ending to the fairy tale. In 1978, when Wegman tried to prove to himself "that I could exist as an artist without relying on my dog," he changed course when he saw that Man Ray wasn't happy being exiled from the important part of his life. But with Fay Ray, Wegman admits, he learned that he wasn't happy until he was photographing her. "As long as I had the dog and the camera," he says. "It makes for a kind of compatibility I found really, really important." And rewarding. Fay Ray, he noticed, had a chameleon quality that differed from Man Ray's solid presence. He found new balances for Fay ("the helix, the narrows, the standing look-back"). Some of the postures suggested costumes, human clothes and characters, and he managed the effect so well that "Sesame Street" hired him to create educational doggy videos. After Fay mated with Arco Laudenburg von Reiteralm and had a litter of 10 in 1989, Wegman began spotting (or imputing, depending on your take on the mysteries of anthropomorphism) character traits in Fay's puppies. The current Weimaraner juggernaut, with its various divisions in publishing, television, video, commercials, posters, postcards and refrigerator magnets, was born. He is a little ambivalent about the side effects. On the one hand: "Thank God! So many people have Weimaraners now, I'm not even recognized anymore when I walk with the dogs. They don't even ask me." On the other hand, Wegman feels responsible, if this popularity means that natural hunting dogs get cooped up in an apartment. Other owners, who perhaps don't have the time or resources to employ a crew of 21 to film their dogs dressed up as lady detectives, wonder why their puppies aren't as gentle, sweet and calm as his. "They kind of help each other," he explains. "Remember when Chundo was up there and the puppy came up? Because he wanted to be there. That's very sweet, I thought. I didn't ask him to be there but he wanted to go up and be there." There is a practical side to Wegman's devotion to his dogs that is almost Old Masterish, like Chardin taking the time to make his own paints. But he has also tapped into something much more mysterious, in the presence of which Wegman is endearingly sweet and modest. "I don't feel lonely when I'm around them," he says. "But I love also listening to them. I always make sure I spend some time just seeing what they're really doing. Especially outside, you know, when you're alone with them. Because so many people including myself fill in a whole vocabulary for them that is ours and not theirs. I remember spending some time for the first time with Man Ray, my first dog. I didn't talk that day. I just listened to what he was listening to, the whole aura of smells and sounds and sights and things that he was picking up on during that day. Most people who have dogs see them as their dogs: 'Come on, boy,' or 'Fetch' or pat, pat. But they're really teeming with their own thoughts."
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