Het Griekse konijn is geen landschapschilder, maar wel groen! Het landschappelijk bewustzijn in het werk van Jannis Kounellis

When one raises the question what the specific meaning could be when Jannis Kounellis uses animals in his art, it is remarkable that one thinks immediately of the performance he held in 1969 in Rome, installing twelve living horses in a white gallery space. The relationship be¬ tween Jannis Kounellis and the arte povera has already been examined by Thomas McEvilly. This paper wants to look for a new interpretation on the environmental aspects in the work of Kounellis, focusing on the works with animals. It is the conviction of the author that one could define this aspect as a ‘consciousness of the landscape’, a term borrowed from a book by the Dutch philosopher Ton Lemaire. The author wonders how a sensual and sensorial ex¬ perience can take place by looking simply at a reproduction of Kounellis’ work with the twelve horses. The paper closes with methodological questions of how a common art histori¬ cal look has had so many difficulties of accepting the sensual sensations of a work of art when it is not literally sensual.