Mark Wallinger

Sadly I couldn't find a picture of this one. Mark Wallinger's A Real Work of Art (1995) was a horse. A racing horse that he bought, named A Real Work of Art and entered into races.

The idea was to take further the idea of a readymade, not only by claiming a thing as a work of art but by just letting it go about its normal business (running races, doing horsey things). He saw the idea of bringing a readymade into a gallery context nowadays as a rather conservative gesture, kind of hiding under Duchamp's skirts.

So, what was to happen would be that his 'work' would get 'disseminated' into bookies nationwide. Sadly, the horse was injured after one race and had to be retired, so that didn't really happen.

The fascinating thing about naming a live animal as a work of art is that from that point onwards everything it effects in any way is arguably part of the work. The work has no existential limitations(!) in a way that I can only compare to Jeremy Deller's Battle of Orgreave, which also implements living humans directly as part of the titled 'work'. Mind job.