APOTHEOSIS UNDERGROUND
The text of Towards a Metalanguage of Evil was re-edited and given three-dimensional form on the occasion of Documenta IX in 1992. Noland's installation was placed in the underground parking garage at the Friedrichsplatz—site of the Museum Fridericianum, a central Documenta venue—in Kassel, Germany. Here, Noland cast her eye further than with previous installations, incorporating not only discrete objects and appropriated images, but also elements of the site itself and works by other artists. The installation ran along fifty meters of concrete wall between the pedestrian entrance and the vehicular access ramp, and in it
...documentary photographs from newspaper [reports] are mixed up with work by other New York artists and materials lying around for electric systems that still have to be installed. Escape route markings and monochrome canvases, small wall elements between massive concrete supports, barriers and graffiti, markers stuck on the floor next to patches of petrol and oil—boundaries between what is staged and what is already there become blurred. Old traces and newly laid tracks can no longer be clearly distinguished.[4]The objects are once again unsettled. The empty, overturned, and wrecked passenger van—the first object seen by viewers in a passing car—was set upon a symbolic sculptural base made of wooden pallets. Several blown-up sections of the text—Noland silkscreened the essay onto aluminum panels and included them in the installation—are partially obscured by loosely wrapped transparent plastic sheeting of the kind often used to store artworks. The lamps illuminating the installation brightly light from below part of another car, as if a mechanic was at work. The entire installation seems provisional or still under construction, abandoned or frozen.
Roland Nachtigaller, in the exhibition catalogue, points out the absence of the body amidst this detritus. Indeed, although everything included is in some way man-made, the lack of a living presence speaks to our dissociation from what we have produced. Andy Warhol's Death and Disaster series, sometimes discussed as a precursor to Cady Noland's work, succinctly illustrated this schism while allowing it to reside safely in the past. The violence in Towards a Metalanguage of Evil is both past- and future-tense; it has either already been enacted upon the bodies depicted in its imagery or is waiting to be activated by bodies that enter its space. (The entire work was cordoned off by red and white striped caution tape.) The potential for pain is discomfiting and is a product of the openness with which Noland approaches her work.
Noland transcended the specifically American context of her earlier work to present an artwork rooted in time but not place: the installation is characteristic of an image-saturated late modern moment and culturally relevant to an international audience. The violence depicted in this work permeates the air like a fine mist, subtle yet ever-present, mirroring the way contemporary culture is suffused with suffering, destruction, and confusion. NolandŐs prowess lies in her ability to artistically arrange everyday reality to highlight that which we might not otherwise want to see.
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW
There is a pendular theory of historical progression which states that each swing from one endpoint to the other occurs in a decreasing amount of time. The conditions that gave rise to the Nixon-era late 1960s and early 1970s mined by Cady Noland's art were coming back into view while she made her work twenty years later. Now, a dozen years after her installation at Documenta IX, and faced as we are with an unpopular war on foreign soil, Michael Jackson's pending court battle, and countless other abnormal scenarios, it seems that the pendulum has once again come full swing. (Think also of Unknown Quantity, the widely discussed exhibition Paul Virilio curated recently for the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain in Paris.)
Noland has removed herself from the art world but one cannot help but wonder what she makes of the present moment. The last section of her essay is titled “Time Mechanisms: Rushing and Stalling,” and states:
There are times when X sees that the configuration of elements—be they persons, objects, or events, are in a pattern of environment hostile to the development of his program. X has two choices in this case: he may vacate the situation, or he can wait until a shift occurs which makes the environment more adaptable to his plan.[5]Perhaps she is stalling and will one day choose to exhibit her work. As we move further from the time of its creation and exhibition, and as her influence proliferates among a generation of young artists eager to plumb the underside of contemporary culture, it becomes increasingly important to not let her significant achievement slip from memory.
SOURCES
1. Nickas, Robert. “Cady Noland: Publyck Sculpture,” MONO: Oliver Mosset, Cady Noland. Zurich: migros museum für gegenwartskunst, 1999. Unpaginated.
2. Nachtigäller, Roland. “In the Garage of Meaning,” Towards a Metalanguage of Evil, Edition Cantz, Stuttgart, Germany, 1992. p. 46.
3. Storr, Robert. “Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting,” Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2002. p. 76.
4. Nachtigäller, p. 46.
5. Noland, Cady. “Towards a Metalanguage of Evil,” Towards a Metalanguage of Evil, p. 22.
