This painting is brilliant. Alex Colville, a nova scotia artist did it. The thing about him that's always talked and written about is that he was a WW II official war artist, and was there when Canadians and Americans first arrived in Bergen-Belsen-- saw the piles of bodies, etc. Said that what shocked him about it was the ability to stop caring so quickly. "You see one body and it's awful," he said, "but when you see 500 bodies it's not 500 times worse. There's a certain point at which you simply stop caring, which shocks you, really."
The "darkness" of the war has never really left his art-- it's often quite ghostly and sorrowful.
Now, read what a motivational coach and speaker says on her website about this work...
"In her office, hangs an Alex Colville print that perhaps best sums up Sue’s insatiable zest for life. A horse gallops down the railroad track to meet an oncoming train. “I’ve had it in my office since 1978,” she says. “The sheer determination of the horse always inspires me. It’s as if I can do anything. My philosophy has always been that anything is possible... anything at all. If I focus on a specific goal and am truly committed to it, I know I’ll get there... just like you can.”"
I wonder what Colville would think of her interpretation of his work. He might like it, who knows. Aside from the obvious (?) fact that the horse is not in fact galloping to meet the train, as she says, but is standing there perfectly still, almost waiting for it to hit him, I think she's missed the whole point.
BUT THIS INTERPRETATION WORKS FOR HER!!! so is that enough? i dunno.
o, art. o, humanity.
6 comments:
I agree, the horse appears to be light in a sense, thus giving it a floaty in place feeling, like being perfectly still as you say.
But what if it wasn't still, what if it was indeed barreling towards the train, full of high speed goal orientedness and steadfast determination?
Is there enough will to fight the train, or would the train make easy mince of the flesh?
Could it be that Colville was talking about both, the beauty of what we are (the horse with all its determination), and the horror that we are (the train of civilisation capable of destroying our very wills)?
I'm inclined to feel like the horse, but I would just step off the tracks and run right past the train, feeling the rush of the tonnage move past me.
Interestingly, the train cannot leave its tracks.
Hmmm...
In Ken Keseys "One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest" It is the dog and the car that are heading for the same bit of pathement.
Industry wins.
Hamlet also says it: to be or not...
I also see the horse as galloping to, not waiting for, it's destiny.
but my interpretation is:
they are both vehicles. and the choice for the "reader" is which one do I want to be on.
I don't see any movement here, just stillness. Capturing a moment so precisely that time has stopped.
And when you compare a horse and a train, don't you think of the evolution of transportation? What else do they have in common?
It makes me think of civilization versus the wild.
Both the train and the horse were imported to north america by europeans, no?
Hmmm... Time has stopped for both of these transports. I think of the west when I see a train or a horse.
The train cannot leave the tracks, and why the hell is the horse on the tracks when it could running in the open filed. Both are slave to man, the track being what they're chained too, to man's directions. I wonder if horses ever wish they were back in europe.
Oh! Just because your interpretation is different from someone else's(including the artists), it doesn't mean there has been a misinterpretation. Everybody has the right to be right on interpreting art, that's the beauty of art.
I think a better title to this post might be mixed interpretations. Missed sounds like you're saying the person didn't get it. That's not very nice. :(
L -Blizzard,
The artist may be rolling in his/her grace at our interpretations. That's their problem. Your interpretation of the artists life and what he or her would apprieciate sends shivers down my spine. For that is a more dangerous interpretation than of the art itself.
P.S. Good pronoun lesson.
" against a regiment I oppose a brain
And a dark horse against an armoured train"
by Roy Campbell
I love this painting even though horses hate running on uneven ground like railway tracks and it wouldn't like the vibration of the tracks either. But the idea that we face life on our own "narrow tracks", functional or not, constantly tripping up, and unheeding of the obvious dangers has appealed to me since I first saw this print in 1980. Owlyone
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