Existing comment:
Reagan on Horseback
1985
Bronze, Edition 8/12
Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) defeated the re-election bid of Jimmy Carter in 1980 with 50.7% of the popular vote and defeated Democratic nominee Walter Mondale in 1984 with 58.8% of the popular vote. Oliphant's sculpture asks us to consider the perspective of "the other half" of the American electorate who, like the artist himself, recoiled at the attitudes and policies of Reagan's first term -- and found something analogous in the image of a whirling and bucking bronco attempting to shed a hapless rodeo rider. This sculpture also register how Oliphant's powers of abstraction and expression translate into an invented form that caricatures not only the political animal but action itself -- in the relative resistance of two attached bodies. As Oliphant explained, "The horse is the country trying to throw him off in the middle of his first term. The horse lost of course." |