Susan Rothenberg

Willard Gallery, New York
Acquired by the present owner through the above in 1976

New York, Willard Gallery, Susan Rothenberg, 1976
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, New Image Painting, December 1978 - January 1979, p. 58, illustrated
New  York, BlumHelman Gallery, Iconic Imagery, November 1986
Buffalo, Albright-Knox Art Gallery; Washington, D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution; The Saint Louis Art Museum; Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art; Seattle Art Museum, Susan Rothenberg, Paintings and Drawings, November 1992 - January 1994, cat. no. 3, p. 66, illustrated in color

Joan Simon, Susan Rothenberg, New York, 1991, p. 41, illustrated in color

Susan Rothenberg first gained critical attention in the mid-1970s, when she introduced a simply delineated horse into the austere theatre of Minimalism. These horses, extremely provocative in their simplicity, represented the birth of a revival of figurative imagery. They also fluctuate between the formal investigation of the painted surface and an intense, psychological inquiry into the unconscious. "The horses are essentially of human scale. In fact, they are close in size, in many cases, to the small, muscular woman who painted them. Heroic they are not. Indeed, while Rothenberg’s horses possess a kind of primitive elegance, they also have their fragile and humorous side … They signify humanness, even though they are not. Stumbling around and splayed across their ambiguous pictorial space like fragile characters from a Beckett play, Rothenberg’s horses are not so much a red herring as they are a kind of disguise. Manifestations of a covert expressionism, they illustrate the artist’s desire to reinvent the body to express an emotional state." (see Exh. Cat., Buffalo, New York, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Susan Rothenberg, 1992-1994, pp. 17-19)

Many different tributaries converge in the artist’s pictorial syntax. The emergence of performance art in the 1970s, much of it Feminist and poignantly autobiographical; the appreciation of Philip Guston’s milky surfaces, and his move to figuration; the evocative possibility of a murky, indeterminate surface from the paintings of Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly and Robert Ryman. A curious kind of figurative painter, Rothenberg is "… an important bridge between the deadpan aesthetics of minimalism and the emotive body language of performance art, Rothenberg’s imagery had less of the ritualistic qualities of Jonas and a touch more of Charlie Chaplin." (ibid. p. 9)

In Layering, executed in 1976, the use of a minimal, yet condensed image, the stylized horse, is intended to ignite basic psychological impulses. Like Francesco Clemente, but more subtly, Rothenberg is driven by a form of self-examination, in which the horse becomes an emotionally charged surrogate of self. "It is this human scale that made the horses read less as animal than as anima – a vital life spirit captured within the horse’s silhouettes and contours and evoked through Rothenberg’s brushwork. But there are other aspects to their making that give them a human presence. The horses lack explicit detail – or even abstracted renderings – of such horse parts as manes and tails. By using only the overall configuration of heads, necks, torsos and legs, Rothenberg reduced the overall shape to notations of a generalized figure. The human aspect of this figure began to become apparent to Rothenberg as one horse painting followed the next." (Joan Simon, Susan Rothenberg, New York, 1991, p. 33)

The figurative element of Layering is fused with a rudimentary but forceful grid that divides the image and the tactile abstract surface ground. Using a combination of matte and French vinyl-based colors called flashe, Rothenberg creates eerie visual polarities between warmth and coolness; between density and translucence in her background. Her physical approach and gestural application of paint reminds of an earlier generation of American painters that includes Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Rather than denying the use of illusion in painting, she instead explored the relationship between the figure and the painted ground, giving them an equal importance by using identical, or at least very similar colors. The agitated brushstrokes, slashes and incised pencil marks add to the emotional character of the composition, reaching a perfect balance between content and formal expression.