Cabin Fever. Susan Rothenberg.
In the middle, it is a line painted on purpose.
Over the past two decades, Rothenberg has transformed the profile horse image into a diverse range of symbols, including a provocative series of figures in various stages of deformation, of which Orange Break, 1989-90(also exhibited in this gallery) is a part, excerpted from the article in the museum.
According to the book, Susan Rothenberg by Joam Simon, Rothenberg wondered what it would be like to do “a human being in the horse position” in 1974. In the following years, Susan Rothenberg painted a series of horses to experiment with a number of ideas.
In Cabin Fever, painted in 1976, she tested few “What if?” What if it was divided in half? What if adding shadows that implied a second horse? What if the color of the subject is close to the background?
When I saw Susan Rothenberg's Cabin Fever in the Modern Museum, the line in the middle of the piece was hard to ignore. Taking a close observation, I concluded that she drew the line on purpose. However, what does that mean? I wondered that she tried to give the feeling that the horse falls to the depth of the cave, or maybe she just tried to imply the difference of the two parts of the horse, or very simply, she is a schizophrenia patient. After I read some materials, I realized she was doing some experimenting.
The postures of the horse imply movements. The legs of horse make people thought the horse begins to fly out of the cave. However, the running horse seems stocked and trapped in the cave. The "imply" shadow actually does not follow the rules in physics and makes people confused whether it is shadow or another horse.
Copyright © 2005 by Joseph CJ Lee
<< Home