Rebecca+Horn---Evan+Honor

Rebecca Horn is a German installation artist and film director. She is most famous for many pieces of artwork, such as Einhorn (meaning Unicorn), Pencil Mask, and Finger Gloves. Horn is a very unique artist, one of which that has conquered many realms of art, such as films, ever-growing flow of performances, sculptures, spatial installations, drawings, and photographs.

As apparent in most of her work, Horn manipulates the space of her works with precision of physical and technical functionality used in her staged works. As an installation artist, she also explores the relationship between body and space. Her first series of works, known as the body extensions, she explores this equilibrium. In this unique and exceptional form of “body art”, Horn attaches objects and instruments to the human body. She desires to play off of and elaborate on the theme of the contact between a person and the person’s environment.

Rebecca Horn’s most famous piece of installation work is Einhorn (Unicorn). This performance piece portrays her with a long horn on top of her head. Horn describes the depicted woman as “very bourgeois,” is “21 years old and ready to marry. She is spending her money on new bedroom furniture.” The image of this art is described as mythic and modern. Another famous piece done by Horn is known as “Pencil Mask”. It is yet another body extension piece made up of straps running horizontally and vertically, with a pencil where the straps meet. As she moves her face the pencil marks are made corresponding with her movement. Here she again manipulates the movement of the human body in order to elaborate on the detailed relationship between the body and the environment.

Finger Gloves is a famous Horn performance piece. The prop is gloves, and the gloves have extensions where the fingers should be. The finger extends with wood and other materials. It portrays the prop touching and details the way in which she was touching it. To the eye, it seemed as if her fingers were extended and in her mind the illusion was formulating from what she was touching what the extensions from the gloves. This performance piece assists in the motive to detail the relationship between the body and the environment.

The common theme for Horn is the relationship between the body and the environment as portrayed in most of her installation work. Her performances detail different manipulations of this theme.