{"data":{"id":"904","type":"artwork","attributes":{"id":904,"topgoose_id":5381,"portfolio_id":null,"tms_id":904,"title":"For the Light","display_artist_text":"Susan Rothenberg","display_date":"1978–1979","accession_number":"79.23","dimensions":"Overall: 105 1/8 × 87 1/16 in. (267 × 221.1 cm)","medium":"Acrylic and vinyl paint on canvas","department":"collection","classification":"Paintings","credit_line":"Purchase, with funds from Peggy and Richard Danziger","is_virtual":false,"is_portfolio":false,"portfolio_tms_id":null,"portfolio":null,"edition":null,"publication_info":"","description":"\u003cp\u003eSusan Rothenberg, \u003cem\u003eFor the Light\u003c/em\u003e, 1978–1979. Acrylic and vinyl paint on canvas, overall: 105 1/8 × 87 1/16 in. (267 × 221.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from Peggy and Richard Danziger 79.23. © Susan Rothenberg/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York\u003c/p\u003e","object_label":"\u003cp\u003eIn this work, Susan Rothenberg depicts a larger-than-life horse frontally, so that it appears to be galloping into the viewer’s space. Here, as in all of her images, forms are not detailed but suggested by heavy, expressive contours. \u003ci\u003eFor the Light\u003c/i\u003e features a spatially—and psychologically—troubling device in the shape of a long white bone that descends from the horse’s forehead. “That strange bone image came out as a doodle,” Rothenberg explained. “After I got over its strangeness, I found I could use it formally.” But the bone also represented a kind of introspection. “It was like digging deep in myself and pulling something out,” Rothenberg stated. “I ended up with this bone.” Likewise, despite her insistence that her attraction to the horse as subject is primarily formal, she is not unaware of its manifold mythical, literary, and expressive associations. The emotional excavation this painting involved, and its advancing, two-legged, vaguely anthropomorphic animal, heralded Rothenberg’s subsequent turn to the human figure.\u003c/p\u003e","ai_alt_text":"Large abstract black-and-white painting suggesting a worn animal skull or bone shape.","alt_text":null,"visual_description":null,"on_view":false,"created_at":"2017-08-30T15:57:31.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-02-06T11:59:52.688-05:00","images":[{"id":93249,"url":"https://whitneymedia.org/assets/artwork/904/79_23_cropped.jpg"}]},"relationships":{"artists":{"data":[{"id":"1131","type":"artist"}]}}}}