Puppy Love : Artist Paints Pampered Pets in Settings Worthy of the Masters

In Doug Taylor’s eyes, Magurk is more than a mere dog. He’s a pit bull par excellence. He’s a furry family member. Indeed, in Taylor’s view, Magurk is practically a work of art.

In fact, Magurk--or rather, Magurks--hangs above the fireplace in Taylor’s living room. The Magurk multiples have their own contemporary master--Andy Warhol, who inspired the transformation from hound ordinaire to masterpiece.

“Each Magurk has a different name,” explains Taylor, his other master, pointing to the nine Warholesque photo silk-screen squares emblazoned with the pooch’s puss.

There’s the square of an orange-and-khaki Magurk, christened “Magurk joins the army.” The green-and-red Magurk is “Christmastime in Magurkland”--natch. Yellow and green is “I am curious yellow Magurk.” Get the picture?

“I love to look at these things,” says Taylor, surveying his plethora of canine art. “It makes me smile.”

The man behind Taylor’s smile is Beau Bradford, the West Hollywood artist who immortalized Magurk. Bradford has made it his business to paint portraits of especially beloved puppies in the style of other artists, preferably famous dead ones, who wouldn’t mind.

“At first I wanted to do David Hockney,” Taylor says.

“ ‘Beau said, “No, no, Doug. Dead.”

“ ‘How about “Guernica”? Magurk in “Guernica”?’

“ ‘No, no, Doug. Your wall’s not big enough.’ ”

Magurk ultimately cried out to be a pop pooch, which might seem excessive--Bradford’s portraits usually start at $1,500--unless you consider the source whence the commission came: real estate broker Taylor.

In Taylor’s home, a tiny photo of dogs is embedded in the portable phone and the three canine residents have their own down comforters. The image of another pet--deceased--is tattooed on Taylor’s arm, and a special set of steps was built to ease the beasts’ passage to an unduly high double bed--”Magurk’s stairway to the stars.”

“They deserve whatever good life they can have,” says Taylor, a dog adorer who rescued all his progeny from abuse or abandonment, “because I don’t know what kind of life they had before they had me.”

Beau Bradford’s Santa Monica Boulevard studio is a gallery of greatness. Not necessarily his, however. On one wall leans a Degas. Sort of. On another, a Van Gogh-ish creation. A couple of canvases look like the real Matisse thing, only peppered with puppies.

“To me, I guess it’s just self-evident why you would want your dog’s portrait painted,” he muses. “You love them and you want them immortalized.”

Bradford used to love a West Highland white terrier named Mary Hartman Mary Hartman who was, needless to say, acquired in the late ‘70s. Mary Hartman Mary Hartman had many charms, but they did not include answering to Mary Hartman.

“She was quite stubborn,” Bradford says, “so of course I had to call her twice.”

When Mary Hartman Mary Hartman died, Bradford didn’t have the heart to bury any more pets, so he doesn’t have one now. But he began painting other people’s more than a year ago at a client’s request.

He’d begun his art career copying masterpieces and eventually incorporated real people into his fakes. One woman, who had commissioned a Monet-esque self-portrait, asked Bradford to paint her with her three Rhodesian Ridgebacks.

“The next time I was talking to someone about a commission, they said it was too egotistical to get a portrait of themselves, but they’d sure love to have one of Spike. From there, I got so much attention with the dogs, I stopped doing people.”

Voila .

Bradford began specializing in dog and cat portraits last fall and figures he’s painted 20 total, among them a Kandinsky cat named Simon whose owner prefers him hanging over the bed to hanging in the bedroom (no cats allowed).

“Since I started doing animals, I really want to stick with animals,” Bradford says. “They don’t ever complain how their portrait comes out.”

On the other hand, sitting for portraits is not a typical pet’s favorite activity, so Bradford works from photographs, favoring the shoot-and-run approach--and sometimes run and shoot.

The latter was Bradford’s technique for getting just the right photograph of Scott Schwimer’s Scottish terrier, Junior (so named because the Scottie dog belongs to the Scottie lawyer). Schwimer wanted Beau to capture the quintessential Junior--”she always walks around the house with a big red tongue hanging to the floor.”

“It was real important that I had a tongue shot,” Schwimer says. “So when I brought her to Beau’s studio, we had to run her around the apartment up and down the stairs so we could get her tongue to hang out, and then I’d grab her and take some pictures.”

Schwimer is one among many Bradford clients whose preference is Warhol-ized pets. Bradford learned Warhol’s silk-screen technique from the pop master himself, who met Bradford in Paris, he says. “The thing about doing the Warhol style: Not only does it immortalize them, it makes them very glamorous.”

And Bradford has been enjoying his own contact fame, thanks in part to his former pal.

“I was on ‘Entertainment Tonight,’ ” which suggested viewers “get a new leash on life” by acquiring a Bradford original. Bradford says, “I figured that that’s exactly 15 seconds long. It’s my 15 seconds of fame.”

But Bradford’s fame fantasies stretch further than that. If he had his druthers, he would indeed be the Andy Warhol of the pet portrait world.

“I’m kinda hoping I can get a commission for Liz Taylor’s dogs or Michael Jackson’s pets--he’s got chimps and giraffes and llamas,” Bradford says dreamily. “That would keep me busy for a year.”