(Horse Rotation)
Anonymous
Found 12/2015, Antique Mall (McCann near 183 and Burnet)

Vibrant and jarring, (Rotation), like its ancestors in the Pop Art movement, calls attention to itself by creating art in its artlessness. The equine subject moves out of shadow into a bold magenta world, as if stepping from Plato’s cave into the 1980s. The rotational symmetry of the image suggests the strange, abstracted characters of a deck of playing cards, perpetually inverted and none too happy about it.

Yet perhaps this is more than a simple horse? The shocking pink is a feminine color (well, pink is a feminine color, that particular shade of pink transcends gender association, or any sort of kinship with the natural world.) Again, it is perhaps a callout to the lurid colors of Andy Warhol’s Campbell Soup and Marylyn Monroe. The strange shape outlined behind the horse “subject” on first pass seems to be something like a tunnel or the vague suggestion of the gloom of night, yet its outline, also, is feminine; it could easily be Elizabeth Taylor in silhouette–and Taylor, like Monroe, was a favorite of Mr. Warhol.

The horse and the feminine are symbolically linked, it seems, and Taylor, a creature of intense sexuality and power, may symbolize many of the same elements. She was, it should be noted, a passionate equestrian, riding horses since the age of three. We cannot know if the anonymous artist truly depicts Taylor in this image, but it seems a likely interpretation, and a strong story.