Janice Cunellis (Piraeus, 1936)
Untitled (Twelve Live Horses), 1969
Artico Gallery Installation, Rome, 1969
G. Chelant, Janice Kuneris: Untitled (Twelve Live Horses), by B. Kruser and K. Hegwisch, Art Exhibitions: The Literature of the Three Great Art Exhibitions of the Century, Inzell Publishing House, Frankfurt-Leipzig, 1991, pp. 198-203.
In January 1969, twelve live horses were displayed in the Artico Gallery, marking the culmination of the first period of change in poor art. In the previous fifteen months, genoa, Bologna, Amalfi, genoa, Bologna, Amalfi, had organized group exhibitions thanks to the active promotion of the critic Germano Chelante, which also included a manifesto ("The Art of Poverty is a Guerrilla War", Flash Art, 1967, p. 5), which was not suitable for defining a revolutionary artist role in the political and social struggles of 1968: "A new attitude wants to do it again'. Really 'controlling where we exist,' this new attitude allows artists to constantly make changes. Artists who are exploited by this attitude become warriors, and they want to choose the place of battle. The advantage of these exploited artists is that they are very varied, they blend into the enemy camp, and they are able to suddenly appear and hit each other. "This reminds us of a traditional mediation apparatus, that is, between man and the forces of nature, using natural objects in public space, in the form of a pleasing mass theater, to create as spontaneously as possible."
At an exhibition held at the Artico Gallery in Rome (a satirical name, the place was first excavated as a basement and then rented out as a garage), Cuñéris exhibited twelve horses, each tied to the wall with reins at a suitable distance. It is well known that the act of exhibiting live animals in a gallery is not related to commercial exhibitions, Kunelis wants to bring complete natural forces in neutral and non-displayed architectural spaces, and the appearance of animals fundamentally changes the way people perceive their environment. The gallery space is impersonal and anonymous. During the exhibition, the gallery floor is cleaned regularly, so this neatness creates a tension between the wild power of the animals. Their presence also physically interferes with the movement of the visitor, and the sensory sensations that people have to produce when they go to the underground galleries naturally extend to the senses of smell and hearing. Still, Kuneris's work remains at the level of a static work. Strictly speaking, this is not an accidental work of art, and even the image of a horse with a silhouette on the background wall is reminiscent of— as in the author's other works — the basic visual dialectic between the image and the background.
In this work, the critique of the "bourgeois" display space extends to the conflict between the artist and the gallery as a symbol of the commercial system. Tied to a wall, the horse can actually be seen as a metaphorical image of the artist—a rebel with the power to stir up creativity, but suppressed by existing social structures.
In addition, there are numerous controversial interpretations of the work, which are linked to the symbolism of the number twelve as a sign of wholeness—the four fundamental points of three-dimensional multiplication of space, the four fundamental elements of the three principles of alchemy. The image of the horse can also be associated with the traditional pictorial symbol system. In the 20th century alone, we can find this in the works of Kandinsky and Picasso. But to relate to the social realities of the time, rather than looking through the cracks of history, one can understand the true meaning of Kunelis's work. The exhibition came only a few months earlier, in October 1968, when the American artist Walter de Maria had performed a similar operation: a cube with an actual floor of fifty meters invaded the gallery space, where, for the first time, in the name of pure naturalness, the artist objected to the display space in its most sensational form.
Excerpt from Contemporary Art
Global Art History
[Italy] by Alexandre del Popo
Translated by Zhou Binbin
Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore Phoenix Yili
The problem in the art world today is that art can make people think of many things, but in particular, art is not like anything. We know what art means, but we're not sure what it is.
The book is accompanied by exquisite pictures that show the reader the development of modern art.
Synopsis
Contemporary Art is one of the books in the "Global Art History" series. This book introduces readers to the development of contemporary art from the 20th century to the present, taking the rise of a new generation of artists represented by Pollock as the source, selecting iconic events in contemporary art to expound, and revealing the roots of some interesting phenomena unique to contemporary times.
Introduced from Italy, the "Global Art History" series is a new, open and systematic encyclopedia of world art that introduces readers to artistic creations from different periods and countries.
About the Author
Alexander del Popo is a professor at the University of Udine in Italy, a researcher of art history, and the author of several works on art history, including Contemporary Art.
Translator Profile
Zhou Binbin, graduated from Beijing Second Chinese College of Foreign Language and Literature, majoring in Italian Language and Literature. She has translated manuscripts for a number of cooperative units, participated in international level examination projects and obtained excellent results, translating "Art in the Romantic Era", "Art in the Napoleonic Era", "Vatican Tombs" and so on.
| all rights reserved, please do not reprint | without authorization
| if you have copyright related questions, you can contact the background to deal with |
★ Phoenix One Force | creator ★ of the ultimate reading experience