Tag: Horses

The horses of Susan Rothenberg

I don’t want this blog to be fielding a constant stream of obituaries, but I was sad to learn of the passing of Susan Rothenberg, an artist who’s been a great inspiration to me.



Born in 1945 in Buffalo, New York, Susan Rothenberg was a pioneer, in that her figurative paintings of the ‘70s were in direct opposition to the Minimalist abstract art that was in vogue in the New York art world at the time.





The paintings she mostly became known for were those featuring horses. Rothenberg depicted equine forms in a pared down style, against monochrome, vacant backgrounds. Sometimes, the horses were bisected; at others, they were contained within uneven geometrical forms. They usually appear alone, or in pairs. “The horse was a way of not doing people, yet it was a symbol of people, a self-portrait, really,” Rothenberg once said.


After the horses, Rothenberg moved on to painting disembodied heads and hands, and various objects.

 

 

At times, the images border on the surrealist, such as her improbable 1985 portrait of Piet Mondrian dancing in diffuse golden light, below.

 




In 1989, Rothenberg married conceptual artist Bruce Nauman and moved with him to a 750-acre ranch in Galisteo, New Mexico, near where Georgia O’Keeffe and Agnes Martin also lived and worked. They spent a lot of time in non-art-related activities, like horseback riding, walking the dogs, feeding the chickens, and were refreshingly uninterested in what was going on in the art world.

 

 

Rothemberg, in her own words: “I just don’t think there’s much stuff going on of the kind that I’m interested in, which is really just about painting. It’s not about issues, it’s not about politics, it’s not about process, it’s not about technology. I’m just a painter.”
Her recent work featured subjects including the inside of her studio and the natural surroundings by her home, using “dirtied-down” colors and thick, gestural painted surfaces to reflect the topography of the region.

Here’s a short video for those interested.

Equine art series

I like to do as much sketching from life as possible because, although often imperfect, it helps capture movement and spontaneity. And I do find nature is a great inspiration.

 

 

Plants, trees and flowers are easiest, because they don’t tend to move around much, and humans can be persuaded to pose. Animals are a lot trickier. Dogs are best when they’re asleep, but mine sadly is so small and dark that from above she just looks like a black blob; I would need to get down on floor level, but, when I do, she wakes up and starts jumping around like a flea.

A nice field of cows having a siesta in the sun is not too bad, but horses are a nightmare. No sooner are you set up that they decide to come over and see what you’re doing, eat the paper, chew your clothes, etc. Even if you’re on the other side of the fence, you get a load of snorting nostrils, bug eyes and, if there’s a few of them, shoving. And then they gallop away…

 

 

The famous 18th century painter George Stubbs used to hang cadavers of horses in his barn to be able to study their anatomy. The smell must have been unbearable—and the flies! Ugh…
Nowadays we have manuals and photographs to study from, and videos that can be put in slow motion to break down movement.

 

 

Horses are fascinating, expressive creatures, so I’ve been making a whole series of paintings, incorporating my previous work with layers and collage. Under some of the paintings I used pages from an old book, primed with gesso—amusingly, the book is an old French manual of equitation (you can see it most clearly in the first painting.) I also used tissue paper, silver foil and eco-print paper for the collage, and charcoal, pencil, graphite powder, watercolor, and oil pastel for the images.

I did not aim towards photorealism, but made the horse the center of a dreamlike, abstract landscape. The background could be water, or snow, or an indistinct field, or clouds of dust.

 

 

Horses are prey—that makes them nervous and fleet, because of the flight response. However, when not threatened they are serene, and enjoy being in their natural environment.

 

 

I’m also drawn to horses of myth, who play a big part in many legends, and are especially prominent in Greek mythology. Immortal horses drew the chariots of Zeus, the sun god Helios, and Achilles in the Trojan war. They were gold-bridled, sometimes fish-tailed when they belonged to Poseidon, and often winged, like Pegasus.
So I had to have winged horses in my series.

 

 

And finally I added the human form, since men and horses have been linked since the beginnings of civilization. The painting below is entitled The Red Trousers. A girl on her horse, bareback and bare footed, standing in water.