To the Lady Dog Fay, With Love

William Wegman and Fay. A famous artist with a dog or an artist with a famous dog?

That Zen riddle has a noble lineage--it comes from “Fay” (Hyperion), the latest in Wegman’s litter of photography books about his dynasty of Weimaraners. Whatever the answer, the combination of man and his dog has made the 56-year-old Wegman a rarity--a Museum of Modern Art-worthy artist who’s also a regular on Letterman.

Of course, fame is double-edged, even for a millennial artist who’s so not interested in starving in a garret. In an appearance on “The Tonight Show” a few years ago, Wegman talked about how he got Fay to hold still for his unearthly photographs of her straddling two chairs or dressed as Cinderella’s stepsister.

“I said ‘drugs and staples,’ ” says the former Cal State Long Beach instructor, who’s now based in New York. “Some fraction of the public took it seriously.”

And a fraction of that fraction made a fuss at a recent book signing at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

“I was told there was a woman there who was outraged because she saw how relaxed my Weimaraners were” in the photos, he says. “She said, ‘They’re drugged.’ ”

Only on the elixir of love.

“The book was a labor of love, as you might imagine,” Wegman says of the tribute to Fay, his second canine collaborator, who passed away four years ago. “I made a book about Man Ray [Wegman’s first Weimaraner] toward the end of his life called ‘Man’s Best Friend,’ which Harry Abrams published. When Fay died, I thought it would be important to do her book. I hope to do the same with her offspring.”

The memoir traces Fay’s introduction to the world as an irresistible Southern belle from a puppy farm in Memphis, and her coming out in New York society as Wegman’s muse with haunting yellow eyes.

“Fay was a woman,” says Wegman, “and she seemed to receive me in a different way than Man Ray did. I was a young man with Man Ray, and we roughhoused together. When I roughhoused with Fay, I found I wasn’t into it, and she was horrified.”

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Wegman learned to treat her like a lady and began photographing her in his studio, placing her feet in roller skates and wrapping her in gauze. Soon he discovered that when he propped her up on a table and draped clothes from her shoulders, she seemed eerily human, albeit incomplete, a la Venus de Milo. The illusion was accentuated when actual human arms were incorporated in the tableaux.

The alchemy between the boy and his dog inspired all sorts of endeavors: video segments for “Sesame Street” and books for the young at heart, and everything else, such as “Cinderella” and “Little Red Riding Hood.”

Says Wegman: “I was seduced by her beauty. She’s gorgeous and deep and awesome.”