![]() This connection is reiterated throughout the exhibition, with many pieces exploring the economic structures in which art is produced, circulated and displayed. Exploring the interconnected networks of finance, political agency and power in the art world and outside it, the artist’s works shine a light on spaces and sites where power relations are exposed. ![]() Hans Haacke, All Connected (Installation View), via New Museumįeaturing visitor polls, environmental sculpture and kinetic works, and his unprecedented institutional critiques from the 1970s and ‘80s, and more recent pieces, the exhibition covers thirty years of pioneering works. The retrospective marks the first major American museum exhibition of Haacke’s career, focusing on the influence of the corporate world on contemporary art. This Marquess was twice a Whig prime minister of England and, according to Wikipedia, “exceptionally rich even by the standards of that wealthy group.”Īs for whether the Gift Horse is a memorial or a monument, if you like, you can take it as a tribute to the City, the Wall Street of London.Hans Haacke, All Connected (Installation View), via New MuseumĪrtist Hans Haacke’s works, ranging from kinetic art to environmental art, conceptual art and institutional critique, culminates in his critiques of social and political systems, orchestrated in masterful form this winter at the New Museum. I then discovered that a portrait of Whistlejacket, a rearing Arabian horse-commissioned by its owner, Charles Watson-Wentworth, the second Marquess of Rockingham-was hanging in the center of a major gallery of the National Gallery, just behind Trafalgar Square. But I had no idea that Stubbs was the son of a tanner, had personally dissected horses, and had published engravings of his findings in The Anatomy of the Horse. I knew paintings by Stubbs of horses and the English horseback-riding gentry from visits to the Tate. She directed me to The Anatomy of the Horse by George Stubbs. Having no experience with horse skeletons-I believe I am not unique in this regard-I asked a librarian whether she knew of any relevant publications. Part of the proposal for the Fourth Plinth was the inclusion of an image of what it eventually would look like. This live “collage,” embedded in the imagery of the saint of the poor, served as a precedent for my tying a knot with an LED live ticker of the London Stock Exchange on the raised front leg of the Gift Horse. Running through blank bands of frescoes depicting the legend of Saint Francis, I had the ticker of the Milan stock exchange giving us the ups and downs of the moment. At the time, Il Cavaliere was still holding forth as Italian prime minister. In 2010, with the assistance of technical wizards, I projected three of the five TV channels of Silvio Berlusconi’s media empire live into empty areas of badly damaged eighteenth-century frescoes in a former Franciscan church (Spazio Culturale Antonio Ratti) in Como, Italy. Mine was to be a horse skeleton, adorned with a live decoration-and no rider. (I am not the first of the Fourth Plinth artists to do that). It helped that I am a newspaper addict.Īfter scrapping several ideas, I thought it might be appropriate to allude to the custom of immortalizing rulers on horseback. Contemporary London, and social and political conditions in today’s world, also entered into the equation. The historical background was one of many bits of information that eventually jelled for my idea of the Gift Horse. George IV, whose equestrian statue graces the plinth in the northeast corner, had spent so much money during his reign that there was not enough left for his successor, his younger brother William IV, to also get a ride on a bronze horse. ![]() The plinth has been empty for more than 150 years. I WAS ONE OF SIX ARTISTS invited to submit proposals for the Fourth Plinth on the northwest corner of Trafalgar Square. ![]() A meditation on capital and casualty, Haacke’s work will be unveiled in London on March 5, 2015, and will remain on view for eighteen months. The 2015 commission for Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth Program, Hans Haacke’s Gift Horse takes as its points of departure an etching by George Stubbs and a statue of William IV on horseback that was initially planned for the plinth in 1841. Courtesy the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. © Hans Haacke / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Hans Haacke, Gift Horse, Model for Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square, London, 2013, bronze, electroluminescent film, overall 30 1/2 x 8 1/2 x 18". ![]()
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