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Horse and Rider (My X)
Artist
Carroll Dunham
(American, born 1949)
Date2013-15
MediumMixed media on linen
DimensionsUnframed: 115 3/4 × 80 in. (294.01 × 203.2 cm)
Framed: 124 × 88 3/8 × 2 1/8 in. (314.96 × 224.47 × 5.4 cm)
Framed: 124 × 88 3/8 × 2 1/8 in. (314.96 × 224.47 × 5.4 cm)
Credit LineCollection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Museum purchase, The Friends of Art Endowment Fund
Object number2016.5
Status
Not on viewSignedSigned and dated with title verso
Copyright© Carroll Dunham
Category
Label TextHorse and Rider (My X), 2013–15, exemplifies the irreverent contemporary approach to traditional subject matter and painting processes that have sustained Carroll Dunham’s career from the 1970s to today. The subject of Horse and Rider (My X) is spelled out in its primary title and parenthetical subtitle. The painting depicts a shapely nude woman riding a horse through an idyllic landscape, suggesting a symbolic embodiment of Mother Nature or a mythic archetype, such as the Norse goddess Brunhilde. But the painting is equally an expression of geometry, a formal arrangement based on the X that divides the composition into four quadrants. The rider’s arms and legs follow the vectors of the X, which extend diagonally toward the four corners of the painting. The viewer’s eye then alights on the central point of the composition between the woman’s rounded buttocks, and the joke becomes apparent: X marks the spot exactly on her anus. An unobstructed view to the horse’s rear end appears directly below. With these focal points, Dunham blatantly sexualizes the figure but in a manner that feels more emotionally detached and geometry driven than erotic.
Dunham’s style is deliberately cartoonish, characterized by flattened forms bound by heavy black outlines and filled in with bright, unmixed colors. The simplicity of the painting’s imagery, however, belies its compositional rigor. The Museum also has a suite of preparatory graphite-on-paper studies related to Horse and Rider (My X) that demonstrates the artist’s process of combining and recombining the elements of his unique graphic vocabulary of lines, curves, ellipses, cylinders, and spirals as he developed the image.
Dunham’s style is deliberately cartoonish, characterized by flattened forms bound by heavy black outlines and filled in with bright, unmixed colors. The simplicity of the painting’s imagery, however, belies its compositional rigor. The Museum also has a suite of preparatory graphite-on-paper studies related to Horse and Rider (My X) that demonstrates the artist’s process of combining and recombining the elements of his unique graphic vocabulary of lines, curves, ellipses, cylinders, and spirals as he developed the image.