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Trying to capture the feeling of wanting things to stay the same even though they cannot

Endlessly attempting to preserve something but disrupting it in the process

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The machine has a soul (only when not working perfectly)

using mechanical and fluid parts to speak to the body and emotion

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Lucina Ward is the National Gallery's Curator, International Art.

Rebecca Horn's studio and foundation in Bad König, Germany, is the site of a textile factory owned by her grandfather, nestled in the trees and hills of a picturesque resort town in the Odenwald ranges, about 60 kilometres south of Frankfurt.

The artist's base since 1989, the Moontower Foundation operates as 'a village with a museum,' an archive, a space for concerts and studios for artists in residence.

The complex comprises a workshop, preparation areas and an overview of Horn's art housed within light-filled, whitewashed interiors: in one of the larger, warehouse-type spaces, Kiss of the Rhinoceros performs a magnificent ritual, while her smaller sculptures, objects and drawings - sometimes in dialogue with the work of artists she has hosted - are accommodated in attic-like rooms with views to the surrounding landscape. It is, altogether, a wonderful insight into the artist's life and work.

'The lovers prepare themselves, they bathe in pink champagne and black ink and embrace each other inside the painting machine. In a weightless state of love, in a crazed dance, they perform their painting.'

Rebecca Horn

Horn came to prominence in the 1980s for her use of performance, installation, sculpture and film in highly sophisticated and intertwined ways. Human-machine hybridity, alchemical transformation and animistic sensibility are key themes, and she draws on a rich history of European literature, Surrealism and popular culture. Some of Horn's machines were made for use in her films, others were created as independent objects.

When I visited in 2019, key works usually displayed at the Moontower Foundation were on loan to Rebecca Horn: Theatre of Metamorphoses at the Centre Pompidou-Metz in France and Rebecca Horn: Body Fantasies at the Museum Tinguely in Basel, Switzerland. These two distinct but complementary exhibitions explored Horn's work over five decades, from her earliest body sculptures in 1968 - objects and instruments attached to her own or others' bodies that explore contact between humans and their surrounds, with limb extensions or structures suggesting prosthetics and augmented reality - to the machines and complex installations often incorporating sound.

Rebecca Horn: Theatre of Metamorphoses highlighted the role of film in the artist's practice and her use of animal, often surrealist, themes in mechanical forms. Works by several 'spiritual peers' - Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Méret Oppenheim - suggest the range of Horn's influences. Highlights included the dramatic and threatening Peacock machine, the exquisite butterfly-flitting Lover's bed (from the film Buster's bedroom) and the constantly buzzing Bee's planetary map. Within the uppermost space in the building designed by Shigeru Ban Architects - its wooden, fibreglass and Teflon hexagon roof reminiscent of classic cane hats from China - the Dancing Snake Rope performed and snapped under the canopy, seemingly caged and ensuring visitors came to no harm.

At Rebecca Horn: Body Fantasies in Basel, alongside machines and other extraordinary objects by Swiss sculptor Jean Tinguely, the artist's works were in their element. Here, the focus was on transformation, with early performative works and later kinetic sculpture emphasising Horn's key motifs and themes. Pencils, funnels, paint and other brushes - as well as feathers, butterflies, shoes, mirrors, musical instruments and typewriters - recur throughout the oeuvre. The liquid of earlier painting machines is directed onto stretchers, books, shoes or an egg.

'They react as we react. My machines are not washing machines or cars. They have a human quality and they must change. They get nervous and must stop sometimes. If a machine stops, it doesn't mean it's broken. It's just tired. The tragic or melancholic aspect of machines is very important to me. I don't want them to run forever. It's part of their life that they must stop and faint.'

Rebecca Horn

In previous incarnations The lovers painted in a corner space and, on occasions, expanded to the floor; in Basel it extended over a long wall. In an adjacent gallery the installation El Rio de La Luna pumps mercury (or 'liquid moonlight') in ways which recall the veins of the human body, its passion and pain, as well as the larger systems of an urban space. In Fluchtkoffer a fluttering suitcase with paint-splashed interior periodically attempted escape via a pole spanning the double-height space. Both exhibitions demonstrate Horn as one of the most important artists of the second half of the 20th century, whose combination of technology and human concerns, comedy and pain, menace and pleasure results in works that are startling, intriguing and often exquisitely beautiful.

The National Gallery has long sought a major work by Horn and several were under consideration for acquisition. Ultimately, The lovers won out. Fuelled by a combination of ink and champagne, The lovers perform for one minute before pausing for three. When the correct mixture is achieved a long, wall-mounted motorised arm sweeps the wall, spraying and dripping across its surface. The painting complete, The lovers rest until next time. Horn's machines confound notions of what technology can do but are, ultimately, without function. Despite and because of their precision engineering these objects tire, shudder or even, at times, seem to refuse to participate. All of them develop a distinct sense of personality: these are machines with souls.

Rebecca Horn, The lovers is featured in the new collection display Worldwide.

This article is from the Summer 2022 issue of Artonview.

This story has been published as part of the National Gallery's 40th Anniversary. For more visit 40 Years.

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A visit to Rebecca Horn's studio and foundation in Germany, offered a rare opportunity to survey the German artist's practice.

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Time based endurance performance as a potent manner of speaking out ideas?

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Wax melting through mechanical means?

Performance of ice melting through fingers

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Eliasson and Minik Rosing installed 'Ice Watch' in City Hall Square, Copenhagen, from 26 to 29 October 2014 to mark the publication of the UN IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report on Climate Change. Twelve large blocks of ice that had calved from the Greenlandic ice sheet were harvested from a fjord outside Nuuk and brought to the centre of Copenhagen. Video by Anders Drug Jordan / Underground Channel.
Watch on soe.tv ⤶

In 2015 choreographer Steen Koerner, an expert in street dance and slow-motion movement, performed a quiet intervention in the circle of twelve blocks of glacial ice that Eliasson brought to the Place du Panthéon, in Paris, to draw attention to the melting of Arctic ice.
Watch on soe.tv ⤶

Olafur and Studio Wayne McGregor at Ice Watch London, 2018

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Ice Watch * Artwork * Studio Olafur Eliasson

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Official website of Olafur Eliasson and his studio: Ice Watch * Artwork * Studio Olafur Eliasson

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Performance Piece (likely presenting the documentation of the work)

Art + Loss

art as an expression for loss - ephemeral and time based works

Tapping into the recent end of a friendship between my two best friends. seeing their relationship dissolve and change knowing that i was unable to help

Ice sculpture held in my hands until it melts and pools around my feet

holding the ice in an act of preservation, but in doing so assisting the destruction of the object through my body heat