Susan Rothenberg
Untitled 1994
© 2014 Susan Rothenberg / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Reproduction, including downloading of ARS member works is prohibited by copyright laws and international conventions without the express written permission of Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
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Susan Rothenberg made many paintings with the name Untitled. This one, from 1994 is oil on canvas that reaches a bit over six feet tall and almost seven-and-a-half feet wide. Although the paint is applied thickly, the setting feels bright and airy. It is dominated by short, criss-crossing gray and white strokes. Glimpses of colors like lemon yellow, rusty red, and peach show from behind as if the top gray and white layer were fog. Just left of center is a bright, buttery yellow horse face showing only the muzzle, black nostrils, and up to just below the forehead. Though the neck is covered by the foggy paint, part of the horse’s flank shines through to the right. The horse’s body points to the left border, but it has turned only its head to face front. The horse appears to emerge from a veil of the gray fog accented here by lilac and dark gray-blue. A thin black bridle crosses above the nostrils. Reins arc down from the bridle, out to the sides, and up into the grasps of two disembodied hands that float around the height of the horse’s invisible ears. The hand on the left is a smear of red and black, the rein loosely hooked under the thumb. The right hand is army green with orange accents, and it grips the rein in a fist. Directly below these hovering hands is another set of hands sitting on the bottom border. The left hand is a smudgy abstraction and the right hand closer to realistic. Both of these bottom hands are reddish brown and hold up a short, thin line on a diagonal, pointing toward the horse face. They are about the size of a crochet hook, so maybe they are eagerly pointing toward the loose, slender reins coming off the horse’s bridle like yarn unraveling from a skein.



