Rabbits: Before, During and After

Artists have always been identified with the signs and figures found in their works, regardless of the value originally given to the elements of their own language. It does not matter whether these are simple traces or geometric or decorative compositions, of animals, people or imaginary characters. What happens is that a true style is, in the end, always permeated by the forms that connote it. And the greater the artist’s ability to bring their own poetics to life, creating a new and original reality in the process, the more their work is destined to become an emblem shared by a society and to endure over the long term.

Out of the millions of bulls created by humanity over its 40,000-year history, we can instantly recognize the graffiti on the walls of the Franco-Cantabrian caves, the scenes of Minoan bull-leaping, and the dynamic moment of mythological truth of the Farnese Bull. To flash back and forward along the historical timeline for a moment, similarly burned into our “image bank”, with no need for further elucidation, are: Shiva’s sacred bull, perfectly balanced between wild power and the equilibrium of dharma ; the hyper-realistic Bidjogo masks; and the Bull’s Head  with which Picasso sublimated the forms through the play of assemblage and the readymade. The bull, which has lived in the minds of those artists who have succeeded in giving an exquisite interpretation of it, will live forever amid the weaves of cultures, ready to resurface at the opportune moment, fully charged with the values that it encapsulates.

Out of the thousand examples that could be cited, the same applies to abstract chequerboard drawings, whether they came from the Caves of Lascaux or whether they were created, 16,000 years later, by Mondrian’s brush; to the horses that run free in the hunting scenes of the bison-hide pictographs of the native Americans; to the shuimohua  of Xu Beihong; and even to the witches of Henry Fuseli and Salvator Rosa, which share an intimate—but not historical—link to the universe of spirits animating the supernatural creatures ( yōkai ) of the ukiyo-e . To say nothing, of course, of the human figure, with the forms reaching their expressive apex in the art history of our civilizations.

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If it is true that every single element that differentiate an artist’s language has a specific origin—and that, indeed, in certain cases, a philology of those elements can even be mapped out—then it is also true that the wellspring, as precise and detailed as it may be, ends up inevitably making way for what came before and what will come after.

Signs and figures, from the simplest to the most complex, have always existed, created and recreated continually by thought. As Mircea Eliade wrote, symbolic thinking “is consubstantial with human existence, it comes before language and discursive reason. The symbol reveals certain aspects of reality—the deepest aspects—which defy any other means of knowledge. Images, symbols and myths are not irresponsible creations of the psyche; they respond to a need and fulfill a function, that of bringing to light the most hidden modalities of being ¹ ”.

On the other hand, the continual sedimentation of signs and figures—an operation in which artists and poets have always played an irreplaceable and decisive role—generates an immense “ museum of images, or of the dreams and falsehoods of humankind. Everyone is free to choose their own style of truth ² ”.

Indeed, it is not inappropriate to state, as Roy Wagner ³ has done, that culture, as a whole, is nothing but the result of the relentless activity of people who constantly manipulate conventional symbols, drawn from a variety of codes in constant evolution, in order to create new meanings.

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If, then, as she herself has said and written time and again, in Chen Xi’s art the role played by rabbits is a direct result of her reading of the series of novels by John Updike, it is highly likely that this influence is just the central (and lest durable) element within a far broader imaginary.

Rabbit, Run  and the novels that came in its wake describe the life of Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom ⁴ , a former basketball player forever looking to escape from the confines of his life. They constitute an ironic retrospective glance at the eternally precarious identity of the author, set against the backdrop of the main events of the late 20th century, which can to some extent be compared to Chen Xi’s experiences in the rapidly transforming China of recent decades.

It was, though, Updike himself who stated on numerous occasions that his “rabbit” arose out of the song (a favorite of Churchill) entitled “ Run, Rabbit, Run! ⁵ ”.  The popular myth has it that rabbits were victims of the Luftwaffe’s ineffective bombing raids over Britain. And from there, of course, we could go further back, in search of the symbolic roles played by rabbits in the imagination, not just of Updike and his readers, but also of Western enthusiasts of Chen Xi’s work. It is the lovable, defenceless rabbit, symbol of fertility and abundance, but at the same time it is the animal that embodies the exuberant ambivalence of waste, lust, and a lack of self-restraint. It is the very same rabbit that we find in mediaeval bestiaries, in the celebrated drawing by Albrecht Dürer at the Albertina Museum and in the paintings of an endless series of artists in the modern and contemporary era, from Ghirlandaio to Titian, Jean-François Millet to Joan Miró, Andy Warhol to Jeff Koons.

In the Chinese imagination, there is the concept of the rabbit as the luckiest animal in the zodiac, partner of the moon goddess Chang’e, who commissions him to produce the elixir of life. This is an idea that has been embedded for centuries in popular paintings, where the rabbit is represented on the moon, under a cassia tree, holding a mortar and pestle in its paws.

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We do not know what the fate of Chen Xi’s rabbits will be, nor whether they will join the pantheon of timeless figures which artists have gifted to the future, to build the imaginaries that generate cultures.

In the delightful exhibition at MUSEC, we see a plethora of rabbits chasing each other through the rooms of Villa Malpensata, in search of the meaning that only the appreciation of the international public can give them.

The hope is that, like the animals who take center stage in the famous novel by Richard Adams ⁶ , they may eventually find a suitable place in which to live happily, steering clear of the dangers and temptations littering the long journey that leads into the heart of the eternal imagination of art.