Zapatista’s Marching

The column, which is neither charge nor parade

Marching is the least dramatic thing a body of mounted and unmounted men does and the thing they spend the most time doing. A picture of a column on the move records the animal as transport and as load-bearer, moving at the pace of the people walking beside it, and it belongs to a different category from both the charge and the review. The title names a marching body, and the record files it under Animal Art > Horse together with abstract-art headings for shape and colour, which is how this catalogue marks a picture whose organisation is formal rather than descriptive.

What the record holds

The date of creation is 1931 and the location is the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The dimensions are 114.3 x 139.7 cm. Expressionism is the recorded style and Mexican the nationality attached to the painter. Alongside the animal and abstract headings the record carries cultural heritage and religious categories, and the measured colour family of the image is red.

Where the twentieth century sits in this register

Of the six hundred and thirty-six works catalogued here, one hundred and six carry a date of 1900 or later. The horse leaves working life across that span and does not leave painting, and the later entries are the place to watch the animal turn from equipment into emblem.