Art for Art’s Sake: Segue From Mad Dog and Glory to Van Gogh

I got sucked into watching Mad Dog and Glory on TCM, and wow, what a trip. The film has this quirky charm only seems to grow as you watch it. Bill Murray, usually known for his comedic wizardry, steps into the role of Frank Milo—a mobster who’s somehow both menacing and oddly sentimental in a weird way. It’s a refreshing twist, like seeing your favorite teddy bear holding a crowbar.

Then there’s Robert De Niro, who takes on the role of a timid crime-scene photographer with an ironic nickname, “Mad Dog.” As you might expect, he’s anything but mad—more like a Labrador who just saw his reflection. To top it off, he lands himself in the bizarre situation of being “loaned” a girlfriend (Uma Thurman) as a favor by Murray’s character. Yes, you read that right: a girlfriend on loan, courtesy of a mob boss.

A cop who’d rather be an artist. A mobster who’d rather be a comic.

The plot edges on the surreal, as if someone took a film noir, added a dash of screwball comedy, and wrapped it all up in an avant-garde frame. A photographer cop with a rented girlfriend from a mobster—honestly, it’s so artistically absurd that it might as well hang in the MoMA.

At one point, De Niro’s character confesses to Thurman (Glory) that his true dream was to be an artist and a real photographer, but he opted for a steady job with a pension. It’s a tongue-in-cheek moment that had me thinking of another artist with dubious “job security”—Van Gogh. After all, when Van Gogh famously sliced off part of his ear during a mental breakdown, it was a 23-year-old intern, Dr. Félix Rey, who patched him up. To show his gratitude, Van Gogh later painted a portrait of Dr. Rey, complete with an audacious use of red and green and a flamboyantly rendered beard.

The young doctor was horrified by the result, finding Van Gogh’s depiction as off-kilter as the artist himself. Dr. Rey’s family found the portrait so distasteful they used it to block a hole in a chicken coop for years before tossing it in the attic. They had no inkling that what they saw as poultry-proofing would one day be priceless, turning “barnyard decor” into one of the art world’s crown jewels. The painting was nothing more than chicken feed—just a shabby piece of canvas barely worthy of patching up a hole in the coop.

I don’t create stuff. I find stuff.

Fast forward a century, and that same portrait, now housed in the Pushkin Museum, is valued at over $50 million. Life is funny like that: a portrait meant as a sincere gesture of thanks became one of the most valuable pieces of art in the world, while the artist who painted it never got to enjoy fame or fortune. Art is a peculiar world—what seems unappreciated and unhinged today could be hailed as priceless tomorrow, whether blocking a chicken coop or gracing the walls of a museum.