Buy Art - Art Review, Horses by Ilit Azoulay

Photographer - Ilit Azoulay

Horses,
B&W Potograph, Silver Print
100x70cm, 2002

In the picture three dark horses stand over a white horse lying on the ground. At the right there is a truck and in the background stands
a huge eucalyptus. In the foreground bars are blocking the view. This is about all that appears: a completely prosaic agricultural scene.
However, there is a lot more here than meets the eye. By looking only at what is apparent in the picture, the observer would miss the
heart of the revelation it embodies. To me, that heart beats by evoking a different story. To put it simply, this photograph quotes a
genre. It alludes to an oft-painted Christian scene: Deposition, the scene where Jesus is taken off the cross and mourned. One such
painting, by Fra Bartolomeo, exhibited in the Uffizi Gallery of Florence, is shown here as an example.

The deposition from the cross exists here as a subtext without ruining the simple, agricultural reality of the scene. This is where the
power of this work of art lies: it is both Jesus and a white horse; those are both dark horses and, say, Mary Magdalene , Mary, mother
of Jesus and John the Baptist; the huge eucalyptus is a cross at the same time; the truck - perhaps one used to carry horse-carcasses -
is also the carriage of Joseph of Arimathaea, Jesus’ secret disciple, who demanded and received the body of Jesus from Pilate and
brought it to the nearby garden for burial. Ilit Azulay’s fantastic photograph manages to grasp the myth within a context that is totally
foreign not only to the myth, but to any human content as such: after all, no human appears in the picture! The distance between the
subject matter and the mythological subtext emphasizes the greatness of the picture. When all is said and done, human pain and indeed
the pain of the horse are not so far removed from one another. A work of art can compare them for us. The grid at the foreground serves
as a pointer, saying: Give this more than a passing glance; there is something deliberately organized and constructed here. What you
see here has a “frame”. It has structure and what is happening is far from accidental.

You don’t have to be a devout Christian to be impressed. Even if you regard the New Testament as a tale with no religious significance,
you will undoubtedly be excited by the reincarnation of the story with equine participants. In other words, even those who do not identify
with Jesus can easily identify with a poor white horse. Though based on the Christian myth, the photograph creates a new, universal myth,
expanding its validity and making it more valid than ever: This is Jesus, but there is something else as well. That “something else” is
depicted in the photograph.