Rebecca Horn; expanding the limits of the body.
Written by Emma Cormier
Rebecca Horn was a visual artist and director, who produced heavily feminist pieces during the 90s. Born in Germany in 1944 from a Jewish family, her path to art was more than uncommon. Because of the political context of Germany after World War II, Rebecca Horn spent her childhood moving from one country to another, preventing her from attending the traditional art school that most artists before her had participated in. Instead, it was her Romanian governess who taught her how to draw during their many travels. She said that the turbulent context in which she grew up affected her passion for drawing; she explained that as a child, she was not allowed to speak German and had to instead learn French or English, but that when she was drawing, she did not have to concern herself with the language. Even when she contracted tuberculosis as a teenager, she drew from her hospital bed. Following her parents’ advice, she studied economics and philosophy in college before quitting after six months to study art instead. In 1963, she finally debuted her academic art career at the Hamburg Academy of Fine Art, but unfortunately, she had to pull out of school because of health issues in her lungs. This deeply affected her, as these problems were due to previous work conditions she was subject to; she had worked with fibreglass without a mask, unaware that it was dangerous. During the year she spent in a sanatorium, her parents passed, leaving her isolated. When she was finally free to leave the medical institution, she started to create art about her disease and long convalescence.
In 1968, Horn produced her first body sculpture, attaching objects to the human body, drawing a tangible connection between a person and their environment. In 1972, she presented her best-known performance piece, Einhorn, during which she walked through a field and forest wearing only a white horn protruding from the front of the top of her head, held by straps. In the same year, she created Finger Gloves, in which she performed wearing mechanical gloves with long fingers.
But Horn also worked with sculptors and would often create pieces that act as a mask or fan, always somehow covering or imprisoning the body. Many of her sculptures were presented in important venues in Vienna, Munich or Cologne, and for the 1992 Summer Olympics, she was commissioned a steel sculpture, l’Estel Ferit. But Horn was also a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts and took part in the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative by mentoring Japanese artist Masanori Handa. Finally, in 2007, she founded the Moontower Foundation in Bad König, which includes a museum and a studio.
Her work, therefore, focuses on the limits of the body and on the way outside factors can imprison or limit us. This was linked to her illness, which prevented her from living freely, and to the fact her health problems were imposed on her by someone else’s carelessness. It also shows how, because of her experience, she chose to use her body as a vessel for her art, perhaps trying to create a better relationship with it. Perhaps because she felt powerful regarding her illness, using her body to create something she loved was a way of taking agency again. Moreover, in the context of the 80s and 90s, her art was often interpreted in a very feminist lens; around that time, a lot of talk was going on about women’s bodies, how they were represented, used, etc. Horn’s confidence and detachment from her own (in many of her works, she was naked) was something bold and new at the time of its creation, and the recurring themes of imprisonment, powerlessness, and the impact of outside factors aligned with the feminist politics of the time. In addition, her work followed a trend of photographic self-portraits that were popularised in the art world in that period.
Overall, Rebecca Horn was a strong artist who overcame a lot of pain and turned her frustration and powerlessness into art, taking back agency over her own body. Her innovative works and the strength they communicate are proof that art can help us take control back and can allow us to thrive from hardship. Her bold endeavours and her fearless approach to mediums and performance deserve to be acclaimed because of the example they set; nothing is too modern or too innovative.
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