Twelve Live Horses
Jannis Kounellis (1969)
Horses, I recognize them. But there is no dirt, no hay, or straw. No grass or wooden fences. No leather. No harness. There is no horse dung, no dust in the air. Instead, the shine of light against the polished tile floor. The animals must be connected to people, to me, and to the world outside this room, because there are traces of us: three buckets and a shovel leaning against the back wall. Ropes and metal rings to which the animals attach.
As I look at the image I hear the horses breathing. The sound of soft nostril inhales is regular and swelling. I understand that the walls of this room echo the muffling. Yet I know too that the space of the room and the bodies of the animals are storing silence, a vast absence.
In 1969 a Greek-born artist named Jannis Kounellis arranged for twelve horses to be tethered to the wall in Galleria L’Attico in Rome.(1) The horses stood there for several days. Afterwards, the horses were simply led away. Who knows where they came from or where they went. During the installation, a man, a friend of the artist, took a black and white photograph of the scene inside the gallery, which in fact was a room underground, a converted garage. This photograph is the only image of the installation that Kounellis has allowed to exist of evidence of the event, and for subsequent generations of viewers to experience the work. I have the photo in a book called Kounellis and I’ve been looking at it now for days:
you know there are only ten horses here, not twelve. Looking in, I’ve stepped past the first two, one on my right and one on my left. The biggest horse, black, second down on the left-hand wall pulls back against its halter, straining the short rope that binds him to the wall. A smaller horse at the back of the room turns his whole body to look at me. The horses all shades of grey and black. Grey flanks. Black hocks. Tails skimming ankles. There warmth of their living bodies hovering; I am sure that they are breathing. There is calm, but the animals are stayed. Why have they been forced to fill this room?
Twelve live horses (Untitled) is tied to inimitable cultural crossroads. This large-scale installation, as part of an Italian art movement known as Arte Povera (“poor art”), stands still, harnessed to the massive political, social and cultural change of the 1960s. Particularly, Arte Povera can be linked to the Vietnam War and the worldwide student protests decrying the American invasion. (2) The installation also occurred at the height of what is known as Italy’s Economic Miracle. Never before, and never since, has Italy experienced such a mass migration of its population from the rural south to the industrial cities in the north. Close to two million people left family farms to find jobs in factories, specifically, to build cars in the Fiat factory in Turin.(3) It was in these northern cities of Genoa and Turin too, that Arte Povera began.(4)
1 Kounellis did not select the animals himself or take any part in the arrangement of the horses in the gallery.
2 During the academic year 1967–68, demonstrations occurred in twenty-six out of thirty- three Italian universities, and by March 1968, an estimated half- million students were on strike. Cullinan, Nicholas, “From Vietman to FIAT-nam: The Politics of Arte Povera,” MIT Press Journals, October, no. 124 (2008): 8–30, http://www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/octo/- /124 (accessed April 6, 2012).
3 The industrial boom in Italy caused 1.7 million people to “abandon the countryside” to look for work in factories or small businesses (agricultural activity plunged within a singlegeneration. Within twenty years the number of farm workers fell from 8 to 3 million). Emanuela Scarpellini, Material Nation: A Consumer’s History of Modern Italy, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
4 The first group show of the movement was called, “Arte Povera e IM Spazio,” and was staged by Celant in 1967 at Galleria La Bertesca in Genoa. It included the work of Alighiero Boetti, Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis, Giulio Paolini, Pino Pascali and Emilio Prini.
