“Growth is more important to me than talent,” a 39-year-old Susan Rothenberg told Grace Glueck in a 1984 New York Times profile. At the time, the artist was “in the prime of a barely 10-year-old career,” as Glueck describes it, attempting to evolve from the paintings of horses with worked surfaces and contoured forms for which she had become known. Some of Rothenberg’s horse paintings are on view as part of The Weather at Hauser & Wirth. But more importantly, the exhibition also includes a range of works that not only confirm her progression from those early works but also showcase her ability to enliven the most commonplace of subjects through iteration of form and gesture.
The Weather affirms Rothenberg’s talent, but also introduces her as a dynamically multi-faceted painter despite the repetitiveness of her subject matter. In an art world that prioritizes the obviously novel — both in the early 1970s, when Rothenberg emerged into the New York scene, and now, 50-some years later — such subtle persistence is rarely rewarded in the moment. So it’s gratifying that this exhibition presents those early horse paintings in pairs or doubles in the front gallery, thus emphasizing her dexterity with color and light.
Left: detail of Susan Rothenberg, “All Night Long” (2000–01), oil on canvas; right: detail of Susan Rothenberg, “Lift Off” (2006), oil on canvas (both photos Leah Triplett Harrington/Hyperallergic)
Rothenberg situates her figures in a haze of impastoed marks, aligning them more closely with formal abstraction than the figurative tradition. Outlines are indicated only through minute shifts in tones and light. For instance, the tawny-colored earth-toned “Mary I” and “Mary II” (both 1974), installed together along the front gallery’s longest wall, present a profile view of a human body on all fours, as if emulating a horse. Each image is an accumulation of singular marks rather than a synthesis of gestures, each brushstroke clearly stating its place within the larger whole of the image. Such an approach was radical in 1974, when abstraction, conceptualism, and minimalist, object-oriented materiality were the trends of the day, and figuration was perceived as retrograde. At the same time, The Weather reveals Rothenberg’s ability to adapt the additive methodologies of those practices, such as iteration, assemblage, or wrapping, and transform them into a seductive painterly visual language.
Installed in the exhibition’s second gallery are “Foxes on a Hill” (1972), “Blue Frontal” (1978), “Our Lord” (1979), and “Red Head” (1980–81), all of which reveal the mastery of Rothenberg’s approach. Like Feminist artists such as Harmony Hammond, Carolee Schneemann, or Mary Ann Unger, who utilized the same methods in three dimensions, Rothenberg doubles, encases, and gathers her subjects, often heads, horses, full human bodies. In “Foxes on a Hill,” she twins the titular animal while also mirroring the pillowy clouds in the sky. In “Blue Frontal,” her iconic horse is enclosed within pony legs, compelling us to see the central figure in relationship to the other. Indeed, relationality is key to these works: Subjects are defined by their repeated association with one another.
Susan Rothenberg, “Mary I” (1974), acrylic and tempera on canvas (© The Estate of Susan Rothenberg / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photo by Object Studies, courtesy Hauser & Wirth)
The yield of Rothenberg’s continuous and steady growth — even in her last years — is most fully seen in the final room of the exhibition. In “Las Blancas” (1996–97), “All Night Long” (2000–01), “Lift Off” (2006), and “Untitled (Band and Hands Green)” (2018), the artist tenderly portrays bodies in a state of vulnerability — often seemingly nude or contorted — as if they are not quite comfortable or settled in their space. These potent and provocative paintings of her last 25 years or so exude a particular anguish, but also an agility in her markmaking. “Untitled,” with its birdseye view of a head in two hands, echoes the overhead, omniscient view of the yoked cranium in “Red Head.” But in “Untitled,” a sense of emotional transformation is more subtly communicated via the slow, brushstroke-by-brushstroke evolution of the green from light verdant to dark evergreen, or the gray peeking through the bonewhite head. Rothenberg was certainly a skilled painter — but more than that, she was one who continuously sharpened that skill through repetition to better articulate sentiments at once everyday and exquisite.
Susan Rothenberg, “Dos Equis” (1974), acrylic and tempera on canvas (© The Estate of Susan Rothenberg / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photo by Object Studies, courtesy Hauser & Wirth)
Left: detail of Susan Rothenberg, “Untitled (Band and Hands Green)” (c. 2018), oil on canvas; right: detail of Susan Rothenberg, “All Night Long” (2000–01), oil on canvas (both photos Leah Triplett Harrington/Hyperallergic)
Susan Rothenberg, “Blue Frontal” (1978), acrylic, Flashe, and tempera on canvas (© The Estate of Susan Rothenberg / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photo by Object Studies, courtesy Hauser & Wirth)
Susan Rothenberg: The Weather continues at Hauser & Wirth (542 West 22nd Street, Chelsea, Manhattan) through October 18. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
