ROBERT HORVITZ
by paledesert
Fission, (16-18 July 2007) and Fusion, (21-25 July 2007), both 22.5 inches diameter, ink on paper.
Pleasure’s Mine, (24 December 2005 – 28 April 2009), 17.5 inches diameter, ink on paper.
Biljana’s Vision, (27 October – 17 November 2008), 17.5 inches diameter, ink on paper.
Strive and Strive and Strive, (14-26 February 2006), 22.5 inches diameter, ink on paper.
Personal Domain of Freedom and Ecstasy 3, (16-22 June 1973), 20 x 20 inches, ink on paper.
Page from my Diary, (6 – 26 March 1978), 14.5 x 14.5 inches, ink on paper.
Page from my Diary, (9 October 1972), 14.5 x 14.5 inches, ink on paper.
____
It's quite the pleasure and privilege to write a few words about the work
of my friend, Robert Horvitz.
The tools of his art are simple. It's a profound and passionate art, but
there is no sentimentality, no preaching. It's all about the total
engagement of ink, paper and pen.
It is work that rewards patience, because it is so patiently done. You
can sense Horvitz leaning into the paper, engaging every atom of his being
in the effort. Every move is small, but cumulative -- but every move may
be his last. A single moment's slip can destroy days of labor. The
intricacy of Horvitz's drawings resembles computer graphics. But there is
no easy, facile, push-button machine work here. Each mark on that page is
an act of will. The artist is walking a tightrope.
Anyone can walk a tightrope--if the rope is lying on the ground. Anyone
can set ink to paper, if the results don't matter. But when Horvitz chooses
to draw, he has strung his tightrope far above the earth. He has set himself
at risk. He makes few drawings, because the stakes he sets himself are so
high.
Horvitz's drawings emerge from deep human passion: the death of a parent,
romantic heartbreak, cosmological awe. The artist is mastering himself
through his craft. His ultimate goal is to create his own private realm of
ecstasy and freedom--a place where the passion, the constraints, and even
the craft all melt away, a space of heightened awareness. The space where
experience becomes art.
There's an underlying logic to the work. You can sense him working from
self-set rules, spinning out graphic algorithms. But it's not mere order:
it's not a skyscraper made of toothpicks. The work also knows chaos. This art
takes place where life is: at the rim of order and chaos. The possibility of
breakdown and loss is always there. It's a game between virtuosity and wild
inspiration--so it's no surprise that Horvitz draws creative power from
jazz. Sometimes the drawing breaks from the melody and rhythm and surprises
even itself. The reward is to find that place where skill can liberate the
spirit. Where the artist achieves a level of performance that he could never
plan, because he did not know it was possible.
These drawings are rare works, because Robert Horvitz is a rare man. He's the
sort of fellow who could plunge himself completely into many years of artistic
dedication, but then transform himself into an everyday agent of the greatest
political revolution of modern times (working for the Soros foundations to
help rebuild post-communist societies). It's no accident that he ended up in
the alchemical city of Prague. While he is very much an American artist,
some element of his personality makes Horvitz sometimes seem more Czech to me
than the Czechs themselves. He seemed to be aware on some higher level that
the gray uniformity of the Communist past was breaking up into a very new
picture, something lively, human, flawed and deeply unpredictable. As he well
knew, this was happening to millions of people in many different countries,
but as a living artwork, the Revolution was especially visible in Prague, the
most musical of all East European capitals. A popular revolt had broken the old
rules and was dancing to its own marvelous, local rhythms.
Now that revolution is well behind us. Another candidate for World Order is
on the public stage. Such is life, and such is history. It's very much a sign
of health and promise that Robert Horvitz, former radio activist, has once
again become a hard-working artist.
Nowadays his work seems based in new emotions--fatherhood, equanimity, a sense
of mature possibility, and a genuine love for his adopted city. I hope and
believe that, through this exhibition, the lively and sympathetic people of
Prague will understand and cherish what this man brings to them.
- Introduction to "Revelations/Zjeveni: Kresby/Drawings by Robert Horvitz"
Published by Galerie Pecka for Exhibition Hall Manes (December 1999)
by Bruce Sterling
____
Pale Desert 