Rebecca Horn: A dissection of touch as discussed through Lucy Lippard and Toni Stooss

Rebecca Horn is a female artist whose work inhabits the realms of sculpture, performance and video discussing feminism, the senses, movement and sensuality of materials on the human body through costume and extension. Lucy Lippard places her work in the “balance between communication and isolation, separation and interaction, distance and intimacy, self and other.” Her work provides a communication tool for the body through garments. Since we all exist in a physical body, we understand the limitations of the body to communicate. Horn’s body extensions are unusual but they ask us to reconsider the relationship between our physical bodies and our inner selves, as well as the relationship of our bodies to the world around us.



















In Finger Gloves Horn extends the body’s ability to touch with the hands, but at the same time distances the body from what is being touched; exaggerating one sense by sacrificing another. By distancing herself from others the work is implicitly communicating “fear of contact,” that Lippard discusses for its ritualistic historical reference. “Fear, in turn, is often the basis of ritual in primitive societies.” Fear is also used as an entry point in the pieces of Horn’s that draw attention to the face and then cover it.
















In Cornucopia, Séance for two Breasts, Horn’s fiber facial extension covers the mouth, creating a woven tube from the mouth to the breasts, individually. Not only is she creating a “sensensation of communication with oneself,” as Stooss asserts, “because the breasts are isolated, and also separated from each other, one’s perception expands triangularly, allowing them their individuality as two separate beings.” Most of Horn’s work has been rendered with some form of material that relates to the outer covering of birds or other winged creatures. Horn uses these choices consciously, claiming these material choices are “a means of tactile extension of the outer skin.”(Stooss 15) Therefore, Horn really does consider her work to be an extension of the body and not just an object resting on the body. These pieces communicate what the body cannot because of our perceived understanding of the physical body, as we understand it.

What I enjoy the most about these specific pieces is the way they allow the body to communicate. Instead of allowing objects to come near the body, Finger Gloves creates distance, which makes me look at the body as timid and full of fear of objects from the outside world. Observing the careful way in which her object makes the body touch, we reconsider the value of touch, and the intimate distance we posses to investigate objects. Cornucopia, Séance for two Breasts is an illustration for me about the importance of communicating with our bodies and not just ignoring them, specifically the feminine body and the ways in which it has been oppressed.