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Cady Noland
Cady Noland (born 1956 in Washington DC) is a postmodern conceptual sculptor and an internationally exhibited installation artist, whose work deals primarily with the failed promise of the American Dream and Nihilism. Her first solo exhibition was in 1989 at White Columns New York City. Since then, her work has been exhibited all over the world. Her work has been exhibited in museums and expositions including the Whitney Biennial in 1991 and Documenta 9 in Kassel, Germany the same year. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and is the daughter of the Color Field painter Kenneth Noland (1924-2010). Cady Noland currently lives and works in New York.

Early Work
Cady Noland’s early work, predominantly creating in the early 1980s, incorporates materials like newspaper photocopies, commercial advertisements, and press/tabloid photographs to reference the overarching theme of American commercial culture.

Noland employs puncture techniques to replicate bullet holes, alluding to the theme of American gun culture. In her collage piece Guns (1986-7), Noland depicts an image of a pistol leaning against a can of Diet Pepsi riddled with bullet holes, along with instructions pasted on the side on how to reload the pistol. The piece resembles an advertisement, for either the pistol or the can of Pepsi, which is up to viewer interpretation.

Noland’s early works were made in response to specific moments in America’s history: the post-Reagan era, the Vietnam War, the Kennedy assassination, the rise of nationalism, the dismantling of the social welfare system…Cady Noland tackles America in anxiety as her subject matter, and doing so throttled her into the public eye.

Late 80s
The late 80s was Noland’s most active period. She begins to create a series of sculptures and large installations that garner significant public attention. Noland combines iconic found-objects, such as beer cans, flags, and tabloid cut-outs, with base elements like metal barricades and walkers. Tackling an anxious America in an identity crisis, Noland emphasizes American nationalism and the masculine underpinnings of the American Dream.

Her most renowned piece was Crate of Beer (1989), a massive installation at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh. Noland stacks 6-packs of the quintessentially American Budweiser beer from floor to ceiling, accessorizes with a draped American flag, and utilizes industrial materials to create a metal scaffolding securing the installation. The work alludes to many themes surrounding Americana, such as America as a culture of excess and waste, American masculinity associated with the consumption of beer, and American nationalism. Other notable pieces speaking to these themes include The American Trip (1988), and Cheap and Fast (1989) which feature Noland’s use of the American flag as either strung up, pierced, or limply hung.

Cady Noland delves into the American psyche, focusing on the commercialisation of criminals as celebrities. Critiquing the public’s interest in violence, she devotes many works to America’s ‘anti-heroes’ as they are tabloidized and objectified for the purpose of entertainment. These pieces are depicted using the method of enlarging media imagery and silk-screening them onto large aluminum sheets. Utilizing techniques of mass production and consumption, Noland’s methods and choice of material further exaggerates American media language.

Most notably, her work Oozewald (1989) depicts an enlarged photo of American antihero Lee Harvey Oswald, the former US Marine who assassinated President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Noland captures the anxiety and political unrest of America at this historical moment, and screen-prints Oswald onto aluminum as being gagged with an American flag and littered with 7 puncture holes depicting gun shots. Sotheby’s advertises this piece as depicting an era frenzied and traumatized by uncertainty and fear, conveying the vulnerability and shortcomings of the American Dream. At auction, this piece was sold for $6,578,500USD on November 9th 2011 at Sotheby’s Auction House, one of the highest prices ever fetched by a living female artist.

Other works by Noland on American media’s transformation of criminals into celebrities include Tanya as Bandit (1989) and UNTITLED PATTY HEARST (1989) both of which are aluminum silk-screened tabloid images of female criminals. Further, the tabloidization of criminals and the analysis of the male psychopath is depicted in her focus on the cult leader Charles Manson and the Manson Family. Multiple works include: MR. SIR (1993), a silkscreen of Charles Manson entering court, and Not Yet Titled (Bald Manson Girls Sit-In Demonstration) (1993-4), a silkscreen of the Manson family seated outside Charles Manson’s trial.

In the year 1990, Cady Noland consistently utilizes the cowboy as a metaphor for ideal American masculinity. The Guggenheim describes Noland’s cowboys as impotent, feminized, and depicted in moments of vulnerability. Utilizing the aluminum silkscreen printing method, Noland reorients the popular image of the cowboy as bravado, and interrogates idealized images of American identity. She does so in Cowboy Black with Showboat Costume (1990), Cowboys Milking (1990), and Blue Cowboy Eating (1990). Sotheby’s advertises Blue Cowboy Eating (1990) as an “image that intervenes our own subconscious expectations” as the cowboy is illustrated as caught awkwardly mid-meal spooning food into his mouth, rather than the typical popularized depictions of cowboys as images of freedom, independence, and male machismo.

Later Work
In her later work, Cady Noland’s mass-media imagery is replaced with a more implicit structural vocabulary. Noland focuses on the use of negative space, particularly shown in her installation at Documenta 9 in Kassel Germany where she occupies an underground parking garage. The Guggenheim describes this era of her work as echoing Minimalistic geometric formalism (Guggenheim). Popular works include Beltaway Terror (1993-4) and Untitled (1999) in which she uses painted unprocessed plywood and raw construction materials.

Withdrawal from the Art World
Shortly after Noland’s solo exhibition at the Paula Cooper Gallery in 1994, Noland was “self-exiled” from the art world: cutting ties with commercial galleries and only visible to the public through her lawyers as she exercises tight control over the exhibition and publication of her work. In an interview conducted in 1990, Noland explains: “From the point at which I was making work out of objects, I became interested in how… people treat other people like objects.” Further, no monograph has been published on her art.

In 2014 at the Brant Foundation, a placard was placed next to her installation stating: “The artist, Cady Noland, has not given her approval or blessing to this show.”

Though self-removed from the art world, her works remain relevant. Triple Candie, a Brookly non-profit space held an exhibition in 2006 entitled “Cady Noland, Approximately”. Major of Noland’s oeuvre including Crate of Beer (1989) and Oozewald (1989) were recreated with the goal to incite the public’s desire and curiosity to experience the real thing, which remains “frustratingly elusive”. Cady Noland has not yet commented on this exhibition.

Further, Brian Sholis, an independent curator at the Cincinnati Art Museum, published an essay-zine entitled “Why We Should Talk About Cady Noland”. Sholis argues for the continued relevance of Noland’s work, and that there is more to her than just auction profits and lawsuits.

Towards a Metalanguage of Evil
Cady Noland is the author of an essay entitled “Towards a Meta-Language of Evil”, published in the 1989 issue number 4 of BALCON. It is the best primary account of her philosophy. The essay was initially created as a lecture delivered at the University of West Georgia at the 1987 academic conference called “The Expression of Evil”.

Heavily informed by her research on psychopathology, she discusses the normalization of the ‘successful’ American male, whom emulates the behaviours of serial killers and criminal psychopaths due to their Social Darwinian aggression. Noland describes living in America as a meta-game: “the game is a synthesis of tactics, played out in the social arena, in which advantage can be gained in an oblique way”.

On her fascination with media and tabloidization: “tabloids already use many of the game’s tactics by foreshortening and cropping celebrities, blowing them up, and in the case of National Enquirer television commercials, reducing them to photo-objects and then animating these objects. These papers regularly publish little bits of the rule gleaned from popular psychology books about how to manipulate people”.

Noland explains the term “the Bonsai Effect” in her essay in which she switches focus from the role and behaviours of the white American male, to the role of non-Whites and women in America. She describes non-white communities as being kept busy by impossible projects, and women as wasting time and money preserving and decorating themselves.

Style & Themes
Noland’s work often explores the underbelly of the American psyche, or what she calls “The American Nightmare,” such as social climbing, glamour, celebrity culture, violence, and death. She describes these social constructs and living in America as a “game”, as explained in her essay: “The Meta-language of Evil.” Her essay exposes many themes in her works, especially that of her fascination with the male psychopath and how his behaviours are similar to the “successful” American man in their Social Darwinian aggression [Social Darwinism]. Noland’s work has dealt with themes of restrictions, both physical and mental, often using metal construction materials in her work to evoke sense of joining or separating.

Noland’s central theme in her work retains fear, both personal and cultural. They are oftentimes clues to herself. Crashed Car was brought upon by the fact that she was in a car wreck at a very young age. In Plane Crash she emphasizes her fear of flying. The Family and the SLA that Kidnapped Hearst is based on her fear of cults. Her newest work has been said to be less explicit and more stable and grounded. The Guggenheim describes Noland’s aesthetic vocabulary as integrating strategies associated with Minimalism, Post-minimalism, Pop Art, and antecedents of anti-form.

Noland explores the masculine underpinnings of the American Dream, especially in her use of cowboys, Budweiser beer, and the American flag. Further, Noland’s work also studies the American social landscape and shows America’s social identity to be in fragments: as non cohesive. On top of that, she makes sculptures that are promoted by the theme of humiliation that in part lives in the American consciousness. It is all in relation to the institution, containment, and mobility, and to the American way of life.

Noland’s arrangement of objects has casualness that call into question the status of the art object and its artistic position. Appropriated by Noland, the role of the press photograph expanded in a post-war country that was understanding and exporting itself through images. She is known for reframing the photo that she appropriates through the materiality of the image itself. It is then transferred by silkscreen from source to surface. According to Noland, to reproduce the image is to insert it into a category of knowledge and understanding. One that is transformed by way of a continuous return.

Exhibition History
Major museum exhibitions include:

Whitney Biennial (1991)

Documenta 9 (1991)

“Strange Abstractions: Robert Gober, Cady Noland, Philip Taaffe, Christopher Wool” at Touko Museum of Contemporary Art

Paula Cooper Gallery (1994)

Museum Bojimans Van Beuningen (1995)

Wadsworth Atheneum (1996)

“MONO” at Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst (1999)

“The American Dream” at Museum Bojimans Van Beuningen (2010-2011)

“Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years” at Metropolitan Museum of Art (2012)

Art Market
Noland’s piece Oozewald (1989) sold for $6,578,500USD on November 9th 2011 at Sotheby’s Auction House, the highest price ever fetched by a living female artist. Further, her red silkscreen on aluminum entitled Bluewald (1989) sold for $9.8 million in May 2015 at Christie’s Auction House, setting a new auction record for the artist. Noland continues to hold the record for the highest price ever paid for an artwork by a living woman.

[Jancou v Sotheby’s]
At Sotheby's Auction House’s afternoon auction on November 10th 2011, Cady Noland’s aluminum silkscreen Cowboys Milking (1989) was to be put up for auction. It was estimated that the piece would rake in at least $250,000 to $350,000 USD after her work Oozewald (1989) fetched almost $6.6 million at the previous evening’s sale. On November 7th 2011, Noland inspected Cowboys Milking (1989) before it was to be up for auction. She chose to withdraw the piece from auction for reasons that court documents describe issues with its “current condition…materially differs from that at the time of its creation”.

Cady Noland backed her choice to withdraw the piece utilizing VARA, the Visual Artist’s Rights Act, claiming she could disavow the work as a matter of moral rights under VARA 17 USC & 106A. VARA affords Noland the right to disclaim authorship of her own works, rendering them inauthentic if she was not satisfied with its condition.

Gallerist Marc Jancou emailed Sotheby’s after the piece was withdrew protesting: “this is not serious! Why does an auction house ask the advice of an artist that has no gallery representation and has a biases and radical approach to the art market?” Jancou then forwarded a report prepared on June 30th 2011 for him by art conservator Christian Scheidemann describing the overall condition of Cowboys Milking as “very good”—noting only that the corners of the work were “bent and slightly deformed, and that some deformations…will always be noticeable”.

On February 1st 2012, Marc Jancou filed a lawsuit in the New York State Court system against both Sotheby’s and Cady Noland for “breach of contract and for tortious interference with contractual relations”. Jancou demanded $26 million USD from Noland for punitive damages, and $26 million USD from Sotheby’s in punitive claims to the amended complaint for good measure. Noland and Sotheby’s answered with motions for summary judgment, both dismissing Jancou’s claims. In November 2012, the judge dismissed Jancou’s lawsuit.

Further, Cady Noland requested “an injunction preliminary and permanently prohibiting Marc Jancou from using Noland’s name in conjunction with marketing the Work, or from offering the Work for sale or from selling the Work, at auction or by private sale”. However, this counterclaim was withdrawn by Noland.

[Mueller v Michael Janssen Gallery]
Noland’s piece Log Cabin With Screw Eyes and Café Door (1990) is a wooden façade with an American flag hung above the entrance, currently located in Berlin. It was a memorial piece to the chief curator of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, John Caldwell, when he had passed away in 1993.

Scott Mueller, a collector and trustee at the Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art agreed to purchase the piece in July 2014 for $1.4 million USD with Janssen Gallery. The piece has been placed outside in Berlin for the past decade and in their purchase agreement it states: “during the approximately 10 years the artwork was exhibited outside [in Germany] the artwork suffered significant damage and deterioration due to its material composition, the inherent nature of its wood and other physical components, and the effects of weather, seasonal changes in climate, time, and other natural elements”. Following the purchase agreement was a condition report prepared in 2010 stating: “the only way to ensure the long-term viability/existence of the artwork was to replace the rotting logs with new ones…the original logs were replaced and a new log cabin façade was reconstructed”.

Upon hearing of the restoration, Noland utilized VARA and disavowed authorship of the piece, objecting that her work had been restored with new materials without her consultation or consent. Following the disavowal, Mueller requested his $800,000 USD back from Janssen.

Mueller filed a lawsuit against Berlin gallery Michael Janssen and the art advisor Marisa Newman Projects on June 22nd 2014. The lawsuit was dismissed by a Manhattan Federal court on December 2nd 2016.