A horse with no leg

I admit  I’ve always had a slight problem with how differently people react to this crazy little thing called ‘art’.

Yes, I am aware that the word is notoriously difficult to define; that art appreciation is subjective, that post-modernism decrees that the artist’s intentions are ultimately irrelevant, and all that… but still. You see a horse with three legs, and… well, everyone seems to see something completely different.

In case you haven’t already guessed, I’m talking about that statue erected right under the new city gate. The one called ‘Zieme’… (and there I was thinking my Maltese spelling was bad. Doesn’t anyone proofread monuments anymore? Tsk…), and which is part of an exhibition leading up to V18, etc.

Anyway, I took one look at that thing, and what I saw was a horse with three legs. Then I moved on.

I admit that might not sound like a terribly exciting interpretation to others, but… each to his own. I found it fascinating myself.

Meanwhile, different interpretations now float about all over cyberspace. And they are all equally fascinating in their own right. Some saw the same statue as an extension of Renzo Piano’s design for the opera house… which likewise appears to be missing a pivotal component. Or a symbol of the parliament outside which it has been placed: and which may at times also appear riderless and crippled. A parable about the decline of Western civilisation, perhaps. A line in a song by America, but which everyone thinks is by Neil Young…

And on it goes. People see in it almost anything and everything… and each interpretation will be supported by adequately substantive facts. Placed in its present context, it is easy to see a three-legged horse as an extension of the surrounding architectural theme… especially if one also feels that ‘incompleteness’ is part of that overall theme anyway. Place the same statue outside the entrance to the national abattoir, however, and...

But like I said, feel free to interpret it as an allegory about the transient nature of political power, if you like. I find that a completely arbitrary interpretation myself, but you’d be roughly in line with the V18 Foundation’s website. “Austin Camilleri’s sculpture” (it tells us) “takes off from a simple premise: the fact that Malta, unlike other countries in northern Europe, has no equestrian monuments…”

OK, you can see what sort of monument they clearly mean – and which we clearly don’t have. The ones in which: “… the horse carries representatives of power on its back, and hence is somewhat symbolic of power itself…”

Like Marcus Aurelius in the Capitoline, I imagine. Or George Washington in… um… Washington. Or Garibaldi on the biscuit tin. And no, there are no monuments like that in Malta at all.

But here is precisely where my difficulty with art appreciation comes in. One does not just CLAIM that there are ‘no equestrian monuments’ in Malta, merely because nothing one sees happens to look like one’s own, biased interpretation of what “equestrian monuments” should look like. Or to put it another way: if others are free to see symbols of power where I see nothing but a horse… well, I’m free to see nothing but horses where everyone else sees symbols of power, and who’s to argue?

In fact, I just drove past one the other day. An equestrian monument. Here, in Malta. It’s on a roundabout right outside the old airport terminal in Luqa, you really can’t miss it. (In case you do, there’ll be another petition to have it removed in the next three years anyway, so don’t hold your breath.) Now: can anyone deny that there is something vaguely ‘equestrian’ about that giant, upright… erm… monolith? Oh, sure, there’s no actual horse visible, I know that. But couldn’t it represent just one single part of a horse’s anatomy… you know, to capture the ethereal essence of ‘horsy-ness’ in a work of art, or whatever?

Reason I ask is this: if Austin Camilleri can get away with a horse with three legs… surely, other artists are entitled to get away with just a horse’s schlong, without any attached horse to go with it. And they can make those monumental horse-schlongs as multi-coloured as they like, too… after all, it is obviously a symbol of the undeniable power that comes with being dazzlingly well-hung.

There, see? No end to the different interpretations you can put on symbols, if you have nothing better to do.

But let’s stick to the traditional, archetypal (call it what you will) interpretation: Horse = Power, etc. I’ll grant that it is a well-established motif in overall Western iconography. It is also not exactly a monumental mystery why it never really caught on here.

Leaving aside the small matter that political disputes have no longer been settled by jousting tournaments in Malta since a short time before the mid-20th century… and that riding on the Church’s coat-tails is not quite the same thing… OK, at the risk of sounding unkind, it works like this:

Close your eyes, and picture a life-sized monument to George Borg Olivier proudly brandishing the Independence Charter on the back of a rearing stallion (instead of just leaning against a convenient barstool and waving, as the real monument outside Castille actually portrays him). No, but really make an effort: like you can literally see that sudden look of panic on his face, and that frantic grip on the creature’s mane as his backside starts to slowly slide off the saddle…

Now do the same with all other post-Independence prime ministers. And what do you end up with? A scene from ‘The Hobbit’, I would think. Specifically, part three: ‘The Battle of the Five Halflings’. Only I don’t think they actually make stirrups that small in real life. And yes, I suppose, you could get around this obstacle by simply mounting them on donkeys instead… but… then… ah…

No, whichever way you saddle it, this business of Malta lacking a culture of equestrian monumentalism looks pretty straightforward to me. It’s an indication of our national tendency towards solid, pragmatic horse-sense. We’d look ridiculous, and we know it.

There is, however, one possible exception. Dom Mintoff was by all accounts fond of horse-riding, and as we speak a brand new monument is all ready and waiting to be unveiled in his home town of Bormla. But is it an ‘equestrian monument’? Not quite. Or wait maybe it is. It’s just that, true to historical reality, the Mintoff monument portrays him wearing the ‘equestrian symbol of power’ around his waist to keep his trousers from falling down. Which just goes to show where all this ‘oh,-let’s-all-interpret-this-particular-piece-of-art’ business might take us all if we’re not extra careful…

All this, of course, means that applying specific interpretations to artistic standards is at best an unwise thing to do. An “equestrian monument” in Malta, of the kind envisioned above, would certainly turn the traditional horse = power motif on its head. Their subjects would be dwarfed by a symbol of the very power they were supposed to wield… and the image, I admit, has a certain poetic value of its own.

But this only leads to further difficulties. It’s one thing to know or suspect something to be true; but it’s another thing altogether to erect a monument to that something. Which in turn gets you to start asking certain questions… like: but why, exactly, do we feel this automatic need to erect a monument to every Tom, Dick and Horsey who once…?

But no. Don’t go there. Like I said, it’s unwise.

Much safer, I think, to depart from a more modest premise. How about: it’s a horse with three legs, for crying out loud. And that’s a powerful symbol in itself, regardless how you chose apply it.

To my mind it instantly shouted a dozen connotations, some of which caught up with me (I had moved on, remember?) a few minutes later. Starting with the sheer visual precariousness of something you know, intuitively should not be upright at all, yet somehow is. Followed by movie titles like ‘They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?’; and with them, the realisation of why you’d blinked uncertainly when you first saw it. Not only should that thing not be standing up, but in theory it should not even exist. A healthy, upright three-legged horse is a thing unknown to our mindset, in a culture which admits to the existence of no such reality. Yet it plainly exists, we’re all talking about it, it’s there.

You could take that as an image of defiance if you like; but you can just as easily feel perturbed by the existence of what should by rights be impossible. You might even wish to obliterate it, even if for the fraction of a second.

Alternatively your mind might to be drawn to what is plainly missing – not just the leg, but also the rider. Put the two absences together, and you might conclude that what keeps up this unreal illusion of stability is, in fact, absence. There is an equilibrium between reality and illusion, and perhaps that horse’s back marks the precise point after which any more reality will bring the whole structure crashing down. Perhaps reality will come crashing down with it, too. Perhaps reality needs that equilibrium to remain… real. Perhaps…

But of course, it still remains a horse with three legs, whichever way you saddle it. And I just can’t wait to see what else will be on display in this exhibition. Personally, I’m banking on four cats with nine tails and no lives.

Interpret that work of art if you dare...