The Brooklyn Rail

Michael Auping: Tell me about the 112 Greene Street show of those really big horse paintings. That was an amazing show. Holly Solomon took me there to see it.

Susan Rothenberg: That was in 1975? Or 74. I can’t remember. But I remember the space very well. It was a big cavernous space with low ceilings. There weren’t that many big beautiful spaces around at that time. It was an alternative space. Not a gallery. They would invite younger artists to show there.

The space was awkward—damp, bad lighting. You had to use some of those clip-on lamps. It was very raw. To have any impact there, you had to make the paintings for the space. You couldn’t just hang them up like you would in a gallery, with perfect spacing and all that. The space didn’t allow that kind of nuance. You had to make a statement. So I did some big horse paintings on unstretched canvas in my studio. I couldn’t have gotten them out of my studio if I had stretched them. Then I stretched and finished them at 112…

Auping: When you installed them, it felt like a cave in there.

Rothenberg: Well, that was a part of the idea. At the time, I was interested in the cave paintings at Altamira. I looked at photographs of them. I think I was fascinated by the spirit they projected, even in photographs—these horses and bulls, I guess, charging across the cave wall. Those photographs had something to do with why I painted the horses.

Auping: Did you ever see those ancient caves in person?

Rothenberg: No. Just through photographs and my imagination. I would love to have been able to see them in person. I read that they used parts of the cave wall to give the animals a three-dimensional presence. So the cave was part of the painting. 112 Greene Street was my cave.

Endnote

1. Interview conducted on August 12, 2008 in Galisteo, New Mexico.
2. Originally published as Rothenberg’s Cave in Susan Rothenberg: Moving in Place for the exhibition of the same name at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth October 18, 2009-January 3, 2010.