There's a scene in The Big Lebowski in which the Dude, Walter, and Donny get into a rather heated discussion about someone peeing on the Dude's rug. They talk sincerely about how to handle the situation and why it's so important:

Walter: I'm talking about drawing a line in the sand, Dude, across this line YOU DO NOT... That rug really tied the room together, did it not!?

The Dude: Fuckin' A...! They peed on my fucking rug.

Walter: That's right, Dude. They peed on your fucking rug.

"That scene got me wondering how the old masters might have handled less lofty subject matter such as this," says artist Joe Forkan, who created a series of paintings titled The Lebowski Cycle. He continues, "Often when looking at old master paintings, you don't know the story they're based on, but the success of the paintings is more dependent on the tension and drama of the held moment, and the interactions of the figures rather than the clarity of story."

So Forkan began looking at The Big Lebowski as a "possible source for a whole body of work, trying to imagine how the characters, humor, and preposterous story arc of the film might be enlisted to build some more layered narratives."

Drawing upon European masterpieces from the Baroque and Neoclassical eras, Forkan's Lebowski work references creations by Titian, Caravaggio, and Jacque-Louis David, to name a few.

"It was somewhat daunting to reference those artists, and I don't flatter myself that my work reached anything remotely close to their accomplishments," Forkan says.

We respectfully disagree. See his work below:

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The Lebowski Cycle is on display at the College of the Canyons Art Gallery in Santa Clarita, California, through December 10.

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Elizabeth Griffin Strategic Visual Content Editor for Hearst Digital Media, Photo Editor of Esquire.com, and staff photographer at Hearst.

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