Horses in Contemporary Art

Horses in Art: From Lascaux to Equine Taxidermies in Contemporary Art

Horses have been around in art since day one. Quite literally. The prehistoric Lascaux cave paintings, estimated to be 17.000 years old, are generally seen as one of the oldest remaining pieces of art and—you might have guessed it—they depict the horse. Ever since horses would frequently appear throughout art history up to today.

Think of equestrian statues during the Italian Renaissance, the portraits of kings on their horses during Baroque and Classicism, but also Native American art, or even Modern Art—think of Wassily Kandinsky’s Reiter from 1911 or Salvador Dali’s surreal horse in The Temptation of St. Anthony from 1946.

The horse as a visual subject or motif has an enormously varied tradition throughout art history and carries a specific connotation or meaning. They have been used in art as a symbol of power but also as an eerie motif; think of Henry Fuseli’s painting The Nightmare from 1781 or Eugène Delacroix’s Horse Frightened by Lighting from 1829.

Today, in contemporary art, we encounter numerous artists and iconic artworks, including horses. This article will discuss the most famous and influential contemporary artworks, including horses, examining the contemporary interpretation of the horse in art.

Jannis Kounellis: Untitled (Cavalli), 1967

We open our list with not only one of the earliest examples of implementing ‘the horse,’ or rather horses, in contemporary, but also one of the most radical. Born in 1936 in Greece and passed away in 2017 in Rome, where the artist used to reside and work, Jannis Kounellis was a key figure for the arrival of Arte Povera as a true postmodern art movement.

Jannis Kounellis worked in sculpture, performance, installation, and painting, even though the artist insisted he was a painter above anything else, inspired by the likes of Jackson Pollock, Lucio Fontana, Franz Kline, or Alberto Burri. Kounellis undermined the sanctity of the gallery space, creating art from cheap materials up to living animals.[1]

In January 1969, he showcased his installation Untitled (Cavalli) from 1967 during the inaugural exhibition at Galleria L’attico in Rome, where twelve horses were stationed around the gallery for three days. The horses were tended by professional grooms and returned to the stables every evening. But during the day, they faced the gallery walls leaving a void in the center of the gallery, becoming an utmost revolutionary work of art.

The core of the artwork is an act of displacement, positioning these horses in the gallery context. An even more radical readymade in the tradition of Marcel Duchamp, using live animals instead of mass-produced found objects. However, yet again Kounellis conceived the installation pictorially as a painter.

The rectangular gallery space in the underground garage references the shape of a canvas for the Greek-Italian artist. In a way, the horses become part of the architecture of the space, attached to the walls and positioned at regular intervals creating a rhythm in the exhibition space.[2]

Michaël Borremans: The Horse, 2015

The connection with the art historical tradition of painting and all its motifs is never far away with Michaël Borremans. Born in 1963 in Geraardsbergen, and residing and working in Ghent, Belgium, Michaël Borremans is one of his generation’s most influential contemporary figurative painters.

He is best known for his unique combination of a traditionally rendered painterly technique and an absurd, surreal, and often conceptual subject matter. Borremans is a self-taught painter with Velazquez and Caravaggio as his teachers. As a result, he is strongly connected to baroque painting from a technical perspective. Doing so, an anachronism emerges between the painterly technique and its contemporary subject matter.

With The Horse from 2015, Borremans reaches out to art history and the history of painting once more. The Belgian master is well aware of the historical tradition of painting horses and engages with it in a straightforward yet subtle manner. Painting horses is one of the most challenging subjects for painters, similar to painting hands or those chubby angels named putti. One more reason for the artist to paint this monumental masterpiece, measuring almost four meters by three.

As a result, it is no coincidence that Borremans also takes on this subject matter. The composition is reminiscent of Da Vinci’s drawings of horses and the texture mimicry of the silky coat of hair of the horse emulating masters such as George Stubbs or Peter Paul Rubens. The light reflects off the horse’s majestic hair, creating a dazzling visual illusion and an exceptional example of mimesis.

However, simultaneously, Borremans reminds us the horse is not a real horse; it is only a picture, an image. The hooves of the horse’s hind legs are intentionally incomplete and in strong contrast with the meticulously rendered body of the horse. Furthermore, the setting is as incomplete as those two hooves, with almost magically painted horses standing in a gritty environment.

Borremans makes us fall in love with his virtuoso brushstrokes and mastery of mimesis and baroque painterly techniques before telling us the painting is a lie. A beautiful lie. The horse is not a horse, only a depiction of a horse, making us question the meaning of its shadow on the gritty wall with Plato’s theory of ideas lurking beneath the surface.

Berlinde De Bruyckere: To Zurbaran, 2015

Another Belgian artist who is even more famous for consistently implementing horses into her artistic practice is Berlinde De Bruyckere. Born in 1964 in Ghent, Belgium, where the artist continues to work and reside, De Bruyckere is a contemporary sculptor and installation artist creating haunting distortions of organic forms.

Berlinde De Bruyckere does not create true taxidermies as with Damien Hirst or Maurizio Cattelan (cf. infra); in fact, she creates her equine sculptures using casts made of wax, animal skins, textiles, metal, wood, and hair. The central theme of her oeuvre is prominent; vulnerability, suffering, and the overwhelming power of nature.

The Belgian artist draws inspiration from the Flemish Renaissance, European Old Masters in general, Christian iconography, but also mythology, layering existing histories with new narratives and topics. She works with universal themes and great dichotomies on pathos, tenderness, and unease—love versus suffering, danger versus protection, and life versus death.

With To Zurbarán from 2015—one of her many equine sculptures—we encounter a blindfolded foal with its legs bound on a wooden table. The lighting and the composition are directly inspired and referenced to the Spanish master Zurbarán, and his iconic Lamb of God, painted in the first half of the seventeenth century.

De Bruyckere confronts us with suffering and the fragility of life but does not aim to shock us. Instead, she offers solace. As the artist has stated, she seeks to show the viewer a helpless body, such as this young foal, without us having to be afraid of it. Instead, it can also be something beautiful.

This subtle interplay of comfort and the disturbing is a true continuum throughout De Bruyckere’s impressive oeuvre. When asked why she started using equine forms as her subject, the Belgian artist replied they enable her to amplify the intensity and scale of the suffering. She felt it was impossible to depict or evoke the vast immensity of deep sorrow and actual pain with the human figure.

With horses, the weight of the figures and the suffering increases exponentially. They can also evoke the image of a slaughter house, bodies on the battlefield of war, or even systematic destruction giving the memory of thousand of lost loved ones during the holocaust.[3]

Damien Hirst: The Incredible Journey, 2008

Born in 1965 in Bristol and currently residing and working in London, the United Kingdom, Damien Hirst is one of the most influential sculptors of his generation and the true poster boy of the Young British Artists. With the formaldehyde sculptures of his Natural History series, we encounter a body of works that are as iconic as they are shocking and contested.

Hirst rose to fame in the 1980s and 1990s with notorious artworks pushing not only the boundaries of art and contemporary sculpture but also of good taste and what is morally acceptable in art. Whereas Berlinde De Bruyckere uses casts of wax for her equine subjects, Hirst’s animals—encompassing sharks, cows, zebra, and more—are as real as they are dead.

By manner of a chemical compound called formaldehyde which is best known for its anti-bacterial and preservative properties, Hirst preserves real corpses in monumental tanks filled with the light blue transparent liquid. By doing so, Hirst reaches the peak of his fascination for life versus death and science versus religion.

With The Incredible Journey from 2008, we encounter another example of the artist’s striking yet notorious Natural History series. The white framed tank, reminiscent the Minimal Art‘s structures and aesthetics, consists of one of the most beautiful species to wander the planet, the zebra. The zebra becomes the ultimate collectible of naturalia, an aged-old tradition strongly connected to art of collecting rare species.[4]

Jorg Karg: Dancing Fearless, 2020

Next, we encounter a specific artwork from one of our artists represented by our CAI Gallery program, Jorg Karg. Born in 1982, residing and working in Kirtorf, Germany, Jorg Karg takes a straightforward approach to create immersive images.

Karg is best known for his digital collages, examining how our visual culture shapes our subjective perception. The German artist focuses on the individual experience of the viewer. As a result, his artist name Jorg Karg is a pseudonym. The experience is superior to the artist, with the pseudonym indicating his very own person irrelevant to this experience.

His digital collages result from a project-based quest to experience the extraordinary. With Dancing Fearless from 2020, we encounter one of his finest images to evoke this experience. A transparent step and a small dark sphere populate the scene of the studio shoot. A rearing horse enters an imagined surrealistic setting, dreamlike and with a whiff of conceptual poetry.

Maurizio Cattelan: The Ballad of Trotsky, 1996

We conclude our article with arguably one of the most famous and consistent contemporary artists implementing horses in his conceptual artistic practice. Born in 1960 in Padua, Italy, residing and working in New York, the United States of America, Cattelan is one of his generation.

Cattelan takes inspiration freely from both the real world—people and objects—and the art world, as an irreverent operation aimed at institutions and art in general. His works are strongly marked by humor and wit, creating playful sculptures and installations to provoke his audience. He presents challenging contexts to force commentary and engagement, repositioning the value of the artwork from the object—or the idea in the tradition of Conceptual Art—to the discussion of the artwork.

His taxidermy horses vary from horses with their heads stuck on the wall to hang from the ceiling. One of his first taxidermized horse sculptures was The Ballad of Trotsky from 1996. Presented during Cattelan’s first solo exhibition in New York, the horse has suspended mid-air with the title referencing the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky.

Since the mid-1990s, Cattelan implemented taxidermy to reflect his interest in how people project their fears or fantasies onto animal representations. Trotsky was a very influential figure opposing Stalin in the 1920s. He represents utopia and persistent efforts to achieve a better world, but also failure. The dangling hooves symbolize the horse’s desperate situation and Trotsky’s efforts and the ideals he represents.[5]

Notes:

[1] Artsy, Jannis Kounellis at https://www.artsy.net/artist/jannis-kounellis consulted 7/06/2022.
[2] Phaidon, When Jannis Kounellis painted with horses at https://www.phaidon.com/agenda/art/articles/2018/october/09/when-jannis-kounellis-painted-with-horses/ consulted 7/06/2022.
[3] Hauser & Wirth, “No Life Lost” at https://www.hauserwirth.com/hauser-wirth-exhibitions/5571-berlinde-de-bruyckere-no-life-lost/ consulted 04/06/2022.
[4] Sotheby’s, “The Incredible Journey” at https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2021/evening-sale/the-incredible-journey consulted 04/06/2022.
[5] Public Delivery, “These are all of Maurizio Cattelan’s horse sculptures” at https://publicdelivery.org/maurizio-cattelan-horses/ consulted 05/06/2022. And: Fondation Louis Vuitton, “La Ballata di Trotski” at https://www.fondationlouisvuitton.fr/en/collection/artworks/la-ballata-di-trotski consulted 05/06/2022.