Gilad Efrat: Imagined Histories of an Archaic Past
By Noah Simblist

Gilad Efrat, Tamarisk, 2012, Oil on linen, 51 x 86-1/2 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Inman Gallery, Houston, Texas.

The Israeli artist Gilad Efrat has worked with imagery that includes aerial shots of Europe during WWII, desert landscapes, an Israeli prison named Ansar and portraits of apes. His work is currently on view at Inman Gallery in Houston, including paintings that depict salt cedars, moonscapes, and the tattered shells of Bedouin encampments. Much of the imagery relates in some way to the Negev desert in the south of Israel.

Efrat has said, “I’m not a figurative artist, I’m always involved with fragments.”1 His process involves gridding out the source photograph and working slowly, cell by cell, to produce a painted analog. In this sense, the paintings are made like an archaeological site, which is often gridded to keep track of objects and structures found in the dig.2 If a fragment is found it is mapped and catalogued as a point in a larger system that includes objects and architecture, which serve as the props and the stage in which social histories are acted out.

His use of aerial photographs might promise the pleasures of an omniscient point of view by resisting discrete fragments and instead focusing on the whole. The use of the “big picture” as opposed to individual details could also suggest grand narratives that provide answers to the contradictions found on the ground. Michel de Certeau asks “To what erotics of knowledge does the ecstasy of reading such a cosmos belong?...I wonder what is the source of this pleasure in “seeing the whole.”3 He answers that in the voyeuristic embrace of a totalizing view, we mistakenly believe that we possess the true knowledge about what we are looking at. This sense of power in relation to perception is at the center of Efrat’s aerial images.

“I am looking at something very far in order to see what’s closest to me. I am talking about my own body, processing the same destruction I find in the other,” Efrat has said.4 In this statement he is comparing the practice of painting and the practice of archaeology as paradoxical exercises. He makes his paintings by starting with a solid color and rubbing away like “rummaging in an open wound.”5 Similarly, archaeological digs begin with a single flat plane of space and are conducted through a process of digging through layers to reveal an image. The difference between the two practices is that archaeology is supposedly objective, while art making is a subjective enterprise.

Efrat explicitly says that he needs to go to something far away in order to get to something close. But what does this spatial analogy refer to? In one sense the scale of the original photographs depicts an image from a considerable distance. These photographs were taken from a plane hundreds of meters in the sky in order to get at an overview image. This seems to give us (and Efrat) a perspective that is more omniscient and less subjective than a viewpoint from the ground. We can see both the grid of the urban plan and the archaeological grid that creates a cognitive distance. But when we look at the paintings in person, like Avdat (1998), we see faint traces of the painted grid as well. Contrary to the distance of the aerial photographs, this grid is concurrent with the flatness of the picture plane. It signifies the absence of distance. When we see the subtle gestures left behind from the paint wiped away, we also get a sense of the materiality of paint on the surface of the image.

Efrat has said that “they feel like no place or every place…they belong to us but don’t. They are distant but incredibly close.”6 What would this statement mean if he wasn’t talking as a painter of archaeological images but rather as an archaeologist working within the Israeli paradigm? Would the dualities of nationalism, historical perspective and ownership apply? The archaeological sites in the Judean desert serve as an example.

In 1993, Israel was scheduled to withdraw from the West Bank in accordance with the Oslo accords. The area around Jericho was to be turned over to the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli Antiquities Authority launched “Operation Scroll.” This emergency set of excavations involved sixteen teams of archaeologists who combed a sixty-mile stretch of the Jordanian valley, looking for Jewish scrolls or other remnants of the Second Temple period.7

This operation sparked a fierce debate between Israeli and Palestinian archaeologists about who had rightful ownership of archaeological finds in a territory with ambiguous sovereignty. This issue was put on the agenda for peace negotiations regarding the final status of Israel-Palestine after the temporary solution outlined by the Oslo agreements. There was a legal dimension to these negotiations that was raised by the Palestinians. The Hague Convention prohibits an occupying power from transferring cultural artifacts out of an occupied territory. This was to prevent one nation from plundering the cultural property of another. But the Israeli argument was that it is not clear who owns the cultural property from sites like Jericho. If a city or area like Jericho has been governed and inhabited by many cultures then who is its rightful owner? Does Israel have the right to claim any examples of Jewish inhabitants in order to preserve its own cultural history?

These debates about the ownership of both territory and cultural artifacts haunt images such as Efrat’s Jericho Winter Palaces (1999). This black and white painting is once again an aerial shot of archaeological sites in Jericho. We can see a light gray ground with rectangular dark gray shadowed indentations. It seems as if the excavations are not complete and as a result we see only a glimpse of a city plan. It’s as if a city were slowly rising from the earth, pushing against the upper membrane of the earth’s crust.

This particular area of Jericho depicted in the painting references the Winter Palaces of the Hasmonean Kingdom (140-37 BCE), the last Jewish sovereign power until the modern State of Israel. Thus, the painting frames and highlights the Jewish historical presence in the Jericho area. In that sense, it acts as a document of the Israeli position behind “Operation Scroll” as well as any other claims to Jewish rights to the land of Israel. But on the other hand, the painting could also highlight Israel’s ideological investment in linking archaeology with nationalism. Or perhaps the painting presents the archaeological site as an example of the fragility of sovereignty. Efrat painted this image while Jericho was within the Palestinian Authority’s control. As the civilizational layers can attest, no one culture can maintain power forever. After all, it took two thousand years for Jews to reclaim sovereignty in the area and if we follow this line of thinking, they will inevitable have to relinquish it one day.

Another painting of Efrat’s, Tel Sheva (1998) reinstates this point. It is again, a black and white image, with a city plan that is based on concentric circles that radiate from the canvas’s center. A Tel is a plateau created through centuries of cycles of cities being destroyed and rebuilt on top of its own ruins. This Tel is in the south of Israel, not far from the Israeli city Be’er Sheva. The earliest evidence of inhabitants dates back to the forth millennium BCE with a continuous presence through the eighth century CE. It contains layers of civilizations that include Persian, Hellenistic, Herodian, Roman and Early Arab remains.

Tel Sheva (officially Tel Be’er Sheva) is also at the entrance to a Bedouin town of the same name. This Tel Sheva was established in 1967 as a part of a project by the Israeli government to sedentarize the traditionally semi-nomadic Bedouins of the Negev desert.8 These Bedouin are Israeli citizens but they are socially quite separate. Their first language is Arabic and they are relatively poor. This is in stark contrast to the wealthy Jewish suburb of Omer that is adjacent to Tel Sheva, whose red terra-cotta roofs and verdant green lawns stand in stark contrast to the dilapidated look of its neighbor. Tel Sheva has a high crime rate and in recent years, some members of the community have increasingly identified themselves as Palestinian.

There are two competing narratives that Tel Sheva represents. On the one hand it can be seen as an enclave of an ancient tribal Bedouin culture that is timeless.9 But on the other hand, its present conditions reflect the complex political, social, and economic situation of a community that has been deeply affected by the State of Israel.

So what does this dialectic in Tel Sheva tell us about Tel Be’er Sheva? Both are examples of physical spaces that simultaneously represent a tension between the past and the present. Tel Be’er Sheva is used by Israel as proof of biblical “facts on the ground” that justify Jewish claims to the land. While at the same time, it represents thousands of years of history that contain multiple claims to sovereignty. Tel Sheva is a present condition that is also framed by the needs of the Israeli state. Bedouins from the Negev desert were sedentarized in order to control desert space for many reasons, most importantly military purposes. But the result of this rupture of tradition and forced form of modern living has been a social rupture, creating a wound that still festers. Israelis like to think of the romantic cliché of the Bedouin as an image of their biblical past. In this sense, Tel Sheva might seem to be a living example of the archaeological site down the road. But the city is also a living example of the price that is paid by this kind of Orientalist imperialism.

In an essay for Gilad Efrat’s mid-career retrospective at the Museum of Art, Ein Harod, the curator Michelle White speaks about Efrat’s relationship to history. She reminds us of Walter Benjamin’s discussion of Paul Klee’s 1920 drawing Angelus Novus. She quotes Benjamin saying, “The Storm drives [the angel] irresistibly toward the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble heap before him grows sky high. That which we call progress is this storm.”10 White says that Efrat often cites this text in relation to his work. He knows the Klee drawing well since it is in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. He is determined to make work that exists in a similar interstitial space, caught between past and present. But the image also speaks powerfully to the multiple ways in which time restlessly clashes against itself in a living monument such as Tel (Be’er) Sheva.

Susan Buck Morse has pointed out that this angel is a great example of the ways that truth and collective memory work and the inextricable relation between knowledge and power. “History is layered. But the layers are not stacked neatly. The disrupting force of the present puts pressure on the past, scattering pieces of it forward into unanticipated locations.”11 Buck Morse unravels the story of Benjamin’s comments about the Klee painting of an angel, noting that the caption of his words has overtaken the image itself. She notes that the painting hangs in the Israel Museum as a testament to this famous Jew who committed suicide rather than be captured by the Nazis. But Buck Morse suggests that this gesture to pin down the meaning of Angelus Novus, can be disrupted by looking more deeply at both Benjamin’s and Klee’s attitudes towards angels. Citing the Talmud, Benjamin was interested in the idea of an angel that was created only to utter praise to God and in that very instant would cease to exist. Buck Morse states, “This is how he understood the relationship between image and caption. The latter was erasable, replaceable and ephemeral, like the songs of Talmudic angels.”12

Buck Morse reminds us that archives, museums, libraries and archaeological sites are the mechanisms with which we store the past and construct a collective memory. Those in power construct the systems of this achieve to reflect their ideology.13

'When legends are appropriated by power and fixed to objects, lifting these objects out of history and preserving them within a nimbus of absoluteness – good and evil, right and wrong, redeemed and damned – legends become orthodoxy, setting the parameters of right belief.

Such legends are formed out of irreducible, unchanging elements that refer to mythic constructs: “the nation,” “the West,” “the terrorist,” the Muslim,” “the Jew.” These constructs reassembled in various ways police how the past is to be read.'14

If we turn now to Efrat’s current work in the Inman exhibition, we can see that the Bedouin encampment in images such as Negev (Bedouin) (2012) is much more politically loaded than we might think. In fact, the Netanyahu administration has recently accelerated efforts to demolish all temporary Bedouin encampments and move them to sedentarized cities like Tel Sheva.15 The once romanticized desert dweller is now a pariah in an increasingly Judaized and militarized nation.

But more importantly, there is another notable shift from the images of archaeological sites and Ansaar prison. Those works were dominated by geometry, a perceived sense of order. The newer works like Tamarinsk (salt cedar) (2012) or Negev II (2012) are roiling with disorder. They don’t have the distance of an aerial shot or the careful grid of an urban plan. Like the Tamarinsk trees that he looks at, the paintings depict chaotic intersecting networks in which light and shadow are shattered.

Perhaps this imagery reflects an attitude in line with Buck Morse’s reading of the angel’s view on an ever-increasing heap of history and the fleeting power of interpretation. Despite our best efforts to categorize and archive, through archaeology, photography and even painting, our grasp on history is contingent and ephemeral. The desert landscape and even the moonscape has had flags planted on it in an attempt to nationalize a territory whose very geology is older than humanity itself. These attempts to name, and by naming to own, a space are in vain. We all fall into the rubble of history. But Efrat has given us angel eyes, and the ability to gain a new perspective on the colliding politics of a collective past that is always already our present.

Noah Simblist is Associate Professor of Art at SMU, Meadows School of the Arts. He is currently working on a dissertation about art and politics in Israel-Palestine.

______________________________________________

1. Michal Lando, “Perpetual Perspective: In the Studio with Gilad Efrat” The Jerusalem Post Jan 1, 2009.
2. This comparison has been made by Efrat himself, as noted by Galia Bar On in Gilad Efrat: Ape Scape (Ein Harod: Museum of Art Ein Harod, 2010)
3. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: The University of California, 1984) p92
4. Lando, 2009
5. Lando, 2009
6. Lando, 2009
7. Nadia Abu El-Haj, Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self Fashioning in Israeli Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001) p240
8. Smadar Lavie, The Poetics of Military Occupation (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990)
9. See Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979)
10. Michelle White, “Neither Here Nor There” Gilad Efrat: Ape Scape (Ein Harod: Museum of Art Ein Harod, 2010), p87
11. Susan Buck Morse, “ No. 004: Emily Jacir & Susan Buck Morse (Hatje Cantz, 2012), p32 - published in conjunction with Documenta 13
12. ibid, p37
13. Buck Morse was meditating on Benjamin’s text as a way to respond to the Palestinian-American artist Emily Jacir’s photographic project for Documenta 13. Jacir photographed a former Benedictine monastery near Kassel that had been a prison camp under the Nazi era and a girl’s reformatory school after World War II. The images were combined with selections from Jacir’s diary entries, which become captions to the images. Many of the images question the construction of collective memory through the archive.
14. ibid, p44

Art Horoscopes
By Wendy Vogel

Limbourg Brothers, Anatomical Man, Tempera on vellum, between 1411 and 1416.

As a self-identified feminist well versed in deconstructionist theories, I know how damaging essentialist discourse can be. I believe that biology is not destiny. And yet, the zodiac fascinates me. I’ve spent many hours contemplating the effects of planets on relationships, creative output, and success — so much that an artist friend once pleaded with me to write a horoscope column for …might be good under my editorship. So in honor of …mbg’s 200th issue, I bring you an amateur reading of each Sun sign’s artistic personality with examples of famous artists. Of course, my personal taste and astrological make-up account for any subjective slant or historical gaps in the following analysis. (In the interest of full disclosure, I’m a Gemini born on May 31 with Aquarius rising and my moon in Capricorn or Capricorn-Aquarius cusp, depending on the reading. Judge me as you wish.)

ARIES
Dates: March 21-April 19
Symbol: The Ram
Element: Fire
Artists with Sun in Aries: Daniel Buren (March 25, 1938), Dan Graham (March 31, 1942), John Chamberlain (April 16, 1927), Sherrie Levine (April 17, 1947)

Aries is the infant sign of the zodiac. People born under this sign are likely to possess both the positive and negative qualities of babies: curiosity, warmth, emotional openness, vitality, impulsiveness, impatience and aggression. For artists, the Aries ability to trust one’s instincts and connect to the depths of Fiery emotion while avoiding the hang-ups of Water signs can prove to be a powerful combination. John Chamberlain’s colorful muscular constructions made from bent car parts, for instance, reflect the exuberance and physical energy of Aries natives. Dan Graham (a famous astrological devotee) exemplifies Aries’ restlessness throughout his diverse conceptual projects, from cultural histories of rock music to architectural pavilions. With the confidence bestowed by Aries’ ruling planet Mars, Sherrie Levine defied traditional notions of authorship in her series of appropriated photographs and paintings.

Advice: If your Sun sign is Aries, you’re likely a natural leader and a good athlete. Stuck in a creative rut? Consider starting an artist collective and/or organizing pick-up softball games for your creative industry friends.

TAURUS
Dates: April 20-May 20
Symbol: The Bull
Element: Earth
Artists with Sun in Taurus: Willem de Kooning (April 24, 1904), Yves Klein (April 28, 1928), Hanne Darboven (April 29, 1941), Joseph Beuys (May 12, 1921), Frank Stella (May 12, 1936)

Taurean bulls uphold the earthy values of practicality, patience, and dependability. They have a knack for teaching and any profession that involves numbers. It stands to reason that artists like Hanne Darboven and Frank Stella, who made their marks respectively through systems of algorithmic notations and a “deductive structure” of painting on shaped canvases, would be born under this sign. Willem de Kooning’s heavily reworked abstract canvases intone Taurus’s stubborn tenaciousness, as does Yves Klein’s patenting of his International Klein Blue for his pristine monochromes. Few teachers loom as large in art-historical consciousness as the mythical German social sculptor Joseph Beuys, who once said, “To be a teacher is my greatest work of art.” From his time at the Düsseldorf Art Academy to his founding of the Free International University, Beuys sought to bring a radical sense of democracy to education. (Speaking of radical political philosophy and economics, Karl Marx was also a Taurean.)

Advice: You’re at your best when you’re pontificating, Taurus, but don’t forget to keep an open mind to new ideas. Go for that tenure track teaching position, but be humble with your students. Also try some Judo.

GEMINI
Dates: May 21-June 21
Symbol: The Twins
Element: Air
Artists with Sun in Gemini: Benjamin Patterson (May 29, 1934), Robert Ryman (May 30, 1930), Ellsworth Kelly (May 31, 1923), Laurie Anderson (June 5, 1947), Damien Hirst (June 7, 1965), John Baldessari (June 17, 1931)

As a Gem, I can affirm that we Twins rarely find ourselves at a loss for words. Adaptable, poised and communicative, Geminians are the best people to bring to a cocktail party full of strangers, and often make great writers. (Pats self on back.) We can wax cerebral, in witty sound bytes, on topics from celebrity gossip to politics to science. Unfortunately, the ease by which we Mercury-ruled chameleons can fly by the seat of our pants can also be expressed, in its negative aspect, as dilettantism, superficiality and duplicitousness. See, for example, Damien Hirst’s personal branding-as-art. Other artists, like Laurie Anderson and John Baldessari, funnel Gemini’s natural charm into complex responses to media culture. Still other Gems — as different from one another as each Twin is from him or herself — work best when they impose rules on their creative innovation, like Robert Ryman’s white-on-white paintings.

Advice: Even though you work best when you don’t have a routine, Gemini, make sure to schedule some time for yourself. And set deadlines, no matter how absurd they seem. Trust me.

CANCER
Dates: June 22-July 22
Symbol: The Crab
Element: Water
Artists with Sun in Cancer: Gordon Matta-Clark (June 22, 1943), Philip Guston (June 27, 1913), Tracey Emin (July 3, 1963), Judy Chicago (July 20, 1939)

Like Geminians, Moon children born under the sign of Cancer possess a dual nature, subject to mood swings governed by their ruling lunar planet. No-nonsense on the surface, Cancerians are deeply creative and sensitive beings who retreat into their shells when emotionally injured. These innate nurturers crave a comfortable home life. They make wonderful parents and romantic partners who intuitively create rich domestic settings. It’s no surprise, then, that Gordon Matta-Clark, born on the Gemini-Cancer cusp, became the proprietor of the 1970s SoHo co-op FOOD. Judy Chicago embraced the lunar nature of Cancer in her search for a distinct feminist iconography, particularly in her tour de force installation The Dinner Party (1974-79). And Tracey Emin’s flavor of shock art exposes her messy personal life to public scrutiny — the ultimate Cancerian expression of intense emotionality.

Advice: Cancer, you have a tendency for self-pity. Try channeling some of that nurturing energy outwards — have you considered a social practice project? Scandinavia and the West Coast await you.

LEO
Dates: July 23-August 22
Symbol: The Lion
Element: Fire
Artists with Sun in Leo: Marcel Duchamp (July 28, 1887), Jenny Holzer (July 29, 1950), Paul McCarthy (August 4, 1945), Andy Warhol (August 6, 1928), Richard Prince (August 6, 1949)

Leos are easy to spot in a crowd. Regal and gregarious, often with exceptional personal style, they command attention. Provocateurs and master media manipulators like Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp and Richard Prince channeled the Lion’s roar into their convention-defying work — see Prince’s appropriated photo of a sexualized pre-adolescent Brooke Shields Spiritual America (1983), Warhol’s celebrity obsession, and Duchamp’s chess tournaments with a nude woman in the 1960s. These kings and queens of the jungle understand how to infiltrate public consciousness through their words, as well. Take Jenny Holzer’s piercing language-based pieces, which first took the form of LED lights on a Times Square billboard during a Public Art Fund commission in 1982. Paul McCarthy, however, channels the fragile ego and tyrannical nature of Leo in his neurotic performances like The Painter (1995) and inflatable sculptures of dog shit.

Advice: Your need for attention and spendthrift habits can be crippling, Leo. Perhaps you should find a studio assistant — preferably a Water or Earth sign — to give you some reassurance and help you with your budget.

VIRGO
Dates: August 23-September 22
Symbol: The Virgin
Element: Earth
Artists with Sun in Leo: John Cage (September 5, 1912), Sol LeWitt (September 9, 1938), Carl Andre (September 16, 1935), Adrian Piper (September 20, 1948)

An Earth sign ruled by the energetic planet of Mercury, Virgo is the most intellectual sign of the zodiac. Discerning, analytical and loyal, Virgos have an eye for detail and very high ideals. On the other hand, this sign leans toward criticism and insecurity. The quintessential Virgo may be Sol LeWitt, the artist who penned the Sentences on Conceptual Art in 1968. (Baldessari, a Geminian also ruled by Mercury, would sing these sentences in 1972.) Artists like Carl Andre and Adrian Piper fused their Conceptual work with political and social content — Andre in his activism as part of the Art Workers’ Coalition, and Piper’s probing work on identity, from her Catalysis performances in public (1970-71) to her videos and newspaper drawings. (Piper has a second intellectual life as a Kantian philosophy scholar.) John Cage blended the tenets of modernism with Zen-inflected chance-based operations in his exciting compositions.

Advice: Virgo, you’re probably already a Conceptual art superstar. If you’re not, your tendency for self-criticism is likely bringing you down. Break your routine for a weekend to put things in perspective. And if you have nervous energy to spare, this Gem could sure use your organizational help.

LIBRA
Dates: September 23-October 23
Symbol: The Scales
Element: Air
Artists with Sun in Libra: Mark Rothko (September 25, 1903), Sophie Calle (October 9, 1953), Carolee Schneemann (October 12, 1939), Brice Marden (October 15, 1938)

Librans simply emanate charm; their refined tastes, emotional balance and intellect draw others to them. This Air sign, ruled by Venus, also has a knack for romance. But their ability to weigh every side of the situation has a downside — they can be plagued by indecision and lack of ambition. Artists like Brice Marden channel Libra’s aesthetic sensibility into a painting practice informed by minimalism, Eastern philosophy and an intuitive grasp of color theory. Mark Rothko’s vibrating palette may also be attributed to a Libran’s gift for color. Sophie Calle, on the other hand, combines romanticism with the detachment of Conceptual art in her highly personal projects. And Carolee Schneemann’s singular performance practice, boldly charting the discourse surrounding the body and sexuality, reacted to the highly rational structuralist film community with which she was once personally and romantically entwined (as her Interior Scroll text explains.)

Advice: Libra, your natural sense of aesthetic balance is unrivalled. Why don’t you try amassing a collection of attractive objects in your studio and see where that leads? You could always present that collection as a work itself — a huge trend right now.

SCORPIO
Dates: October 24-November 21
Symbol: Scorpion or Eagle
Element: Water
Artists with Sun in Scorpio: Pablo Picasso (October 25, 1881), Mike Kelley (October 27, 1954), Paul Thek (November 2, 1933), Lee Lozano (November 5, 1930), Ana Mendieta (November 18, 1948)

Natives of Scorpio inspire awe, fear and desire. This dark, sensual Water sign can be ruthless and magnetic at the same time. In business and pleasure, they pursue their goals single-mindedly and can be vindictive to people who put obstacles in their way. At the same time, they are extremely committed to their friends, family and lovers — though the road with a Scorpion rarely runs smooth. The passionate, tumultuous personal life of modern master Pablo Picasso often found its way onto the canvas. Lee Lozano made her obstinate mark by her overriding conceptual project to withdraw from the art world permanently. Sadly, the lives of many brilliant Scorpio-born artists like Mike Kelley, Paul Thek and Ana Mendieta, who explored topics of sexual violence, repression and death in their work, ended tragically. (Though Mendieta’s husband Carl Andre was acquitted of her murder, the cause of her mysterious fall from the window of their high-rise apartment remains open to speculation.)

Advice: You are capable of emotional devastation. It may be best to avoid relationships with other artists and art professionals. But who am I kidding? You won’t listen to me. In fact, you’ll probably try to seduce me as soon as the opportunity presents itself.

SAGITTARIUS
Dates: November 22-December 21
Symbol: The Archer
Element: Fire
Artists with Sun in Sagittarius: Kara Walker (November 26, 1969), Félix González-Torres (November 26, 1957), Marina Abramović (November 30, 1946) and Ulay (November 30, 1943), Ed Ruscha (December 16, 1937), Alighiero e Boetti (December 16, 1940)

Half-man, half-horse, Sagittarius embodies the mind-body duality that afflicts human consciousness. This highly energetic Fire sign, fiercely intellectual, identifies with the proletariat and the downtrodden. For this reason, politicized content often makes its way into the work of Sagittarians. The Sag tendency for blunt expression can equally inform the direct, piercing output of these artists’ oeuvres. Marina Abramović and Ulay, Sagittarians born on the same date (November 30), “twinned” themselves in confrontational, durational performance work throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Twinning also became an important theme in the work of Italian artist Alighiero e Boetti (Alighiero AND Boetti), while Boetti’s world maps created by workers in Pakistan and other developing nations expressed political content in a provocative way. Even after identity politics became a dirty word (again), artists like Kara Walker and Félix González-Torres, whose works dissect the trauma of American slavery and the devastation of the AIDS epidemic, invoke lasting emotional impact.

Advice: Sagittarius, you have a tendency to think without speaking. Try to temper this candidness in your everyday interactions. Consider putting that impassioned speech to good use in a political cause of your choice. I’m sure OWS could use your voice.

CAPRICORN
Dates: December 22-January 19
Symbol: The Goat
Element: EarthArtists with Sun in Capricorn: Louise Bourgeois (December 25, 1911), Henri Matisse (December 31, 1869), Robert Smithson (January 2, 1938), Eva Hesse (January 11, 1936), Kiki Smith (January 18, 1954), Cindy Sherman (January 19, 1954)

“The accountants of the zodiac,” the Goats have a bad rap in creative circles for being miserly and emotionally detached. Allow me to defend you, Caps. This arguably most earthy of Earth signs exhibits the values of practical thinking, logistic know-how and organizational ability without the outward insecurity or bullheadedness of Virgo and Taurus. It’s no coincidence that Robert Smithson, one of the most famous figures of the Land Art movement, is a Capricorn. I suspect that if you probed more deeply, you would discover a lot of sculptors born under this sign — Eva Hesse and Kiki Smith, however, are excellent examples to begin. The wide range of artistic personalities and styles grouped under this sign, from Matisse to Cindy Sherman, suggest that the Sun in Capricorn may be easily overpowered by other ruling planets’ influence. Maybe a follow-up article is in order.

Advice: Capricorn, while you’re busy plotting world domination, don’t forget to have fun once in a while. Leave the studio and attend an opening occasionally. It could help your career and your personal life.

AQUARIUS
Dates: January 20-February 18
Symbol: The Water Bearer
Element: Air
Artists with Sun in Aquarius: Barbara Kruger (January 26, 1945), Jackson Pollock (January 28, 1912), Robert Morris (February 9, 1931), Gerhard Richter (February 9, 1932), Miranda July (February 15, 1974), Yoko Ono (February 18, 1933)

Iconoclasts and eccentrics, Aquarians love to shock. They associate with fringe personalities — just think of Yoko Ono’s forays into countercultural exploration, from rock n’ roll to experimental noise — and embrace humanitarian political ideals. Curiously, however, they maintain a distanced attitude from the people closest to them. Like their fellow Air signs, Gemini and Libra, Aquarians have a great facility for language. Consider Miranda July’s Fluxus-inspired instruction-based piece Learning to Love You More, Ono’s Grapefruit poems and Barbara Kruger’s jolting collages. Lightning rods for cultural change, Aquarians truly connect with the spirit of the avant-garde. Pollock’s Abstract Expressionism, Gerhard Richter’s Capitalist Realism, and Robert Morris’s first Green Gallery exhibition of six-foot-tall rectangular boxes provided the touchstone imagery for entire movements.

Advice: Aquarius, you’re an uncompromising dynamo and everyone knows it. But think about the impact of your trailblazing individualism. Are you freezing out everyone around you? If so, consider collaborative work. Join a punk band? It worked for fellow Aquarians John Lydon and Henry Rollins.

PISCES
Dates: February 19-March 20
Symbol: The Fish
Element: Water
Artists with Sun in Pisces: Martin Kippenberger (February 25, 1953), Eleanor Antin (February 27, 1935), Hannah Wilke (March 7, 1940), David Smith (March 9, 1906)

The two fish that represent Pisces swim in opposite directions, symbolizing the dual nature of this sign that drowns in emotion. Pisces are mystic healers and “old souls” that often attract damaged personalities to them. For a popular culture example, let me offer Kurt Cobain as the penultimate Fish (think about the opening lines of the ode to Courtney Love’s “Heart-Shaped Box”: “She has me like a Pisces when I am weak.”) Unfortunately, the extreme sensitivity of Pisces often leads them to escapism. While this urge can often be satiated by a rigorous creative practice, it sometimes leads to madness, drug and alcohol addiction. Such was the case of Martin Kippenberger, as well known for his hard-partying attitude as his prolific career encompassing sculpture, painting, prints and performance. Hannah Wilke and Eleanor Antin also embraced Pisces’ twinned nature in their performance-based work. While Wilke challenged gender norms by using her own naked, sexualized body as an avatar or cipher for discussion, Antin created highly theatrical characters, such as the homeless King of Solana Beach and the black ballerina Eleanor Antinova from Diaghilev’s company.

Advice: Pisces, use your sensitivity to explore what other artists cannot. We’ve all been affected this week by the awesome power of nature in your element, Water. Without being crass, take this experience and allow it to inform your creative instincts.

Wendy Vogel is a New York-based critic, editor and occasional curator.