April 19, 2006
Cady Noland, "approximately"
This seems like a very bad idea, and one that will be very short-lived if Cady Noland responds to this exhibition the way she has to exhibitions that include artworks she actually made.
Cady Noland Approximately Sculptures and Editions, 1984-1999Conceived by Triple Candie, made in collaboration with Taylor Davis, Rudy Shepherd, and two other artists
This exhibition is the first survey ever devoted to Cady Noland's oeuvre. It consists of objects made by Triple Candie and four artists that are based on sculpture and editions by Cady Noland that date from the mid-1980s through the late 1990s. The works were recreated from images found on the Internet and in exhibition catalogues. Though an attempt was made to replicate the original artworks as faithfully as possible, they are not reproductions. They are approximations that have been handicapped by practical limitations (e.g. lack of money and technical expertise; insufficient information about scale, materials, or color; the obsolescence of certain ready-made components; and a limited time-frame). By deliberately falling short of its target, the exhibition is meant to incite the public's desire and curiosity to experience the real thing, which remains frustratingly elusive.
[. . .]
"Cady Noland Approximately" was conceived of conjointly with—and is meant to serve as a complement to—the exhibition "David Hammons: The Unauthorized Retrospective" that was presented at Triple Candie in February/March 2006. There are a number of important similarities between the two artists. Both are evasive figures whose art has been highly influential on younger artists. Both artists tightly control access to their work. Both have expressed dissatisfaction with the art world and have operated outside of it, on their own terms, albeit in different ways. The Hammons exhibition consisted of photocopies and computer printouts from existing reproductions; this exhibition consists of three-dimensional objects that are made from information gleaned from existing reproductions but which are not exact replicas. In comparing the two exhibitions, one question that arises is: "Which of the two compromised forms of replication is closer to the real thing?"
"Cady Noland Approximately" was made in collaboration with four artists: Taylor Davis, Rudy Shepherd, and two others who asked to not be named. None of the objects in the exhibition are individually authored. Cady Noland was not consulted, or notified, about this exhibition. She lives and works in New York City.
(It should be noted that I wrote and distributed an essay titled "Why We Should Talk About Cady Noland," also without consulting her prior to its publication.)
Far be it from me to police what a gallery chooses to exhibit, but it seems to me that making an exhibition-of-photocopied-reproductions-as-homage in the spirit of one artist—an exhibition that leads even the Times to wonder if the artist is involved—is one thing. It is far different, and less malicious, than re-creating the artworks of an elusive artist, no matter how poorly and with how much transparency. As someone said last night at dinner, "This show cannot even begin to look like a Cady Noland show. Cady has very specific reasons for installing her objects the way she does; the relationships between them are of equal importance to the sculptures themselves. This cannot be re-created by others' hands." Hammons is enigmatic, and his relationship to exhibitions and the market can be seen, in some way, as part of his oeuvre; Noland's relationship with the art world is much closer to a categorical "no." In my mind, the differences between those stances outweigh the similarities described above.
It's telling that two of the four artists enlisted to re-create these works insist on their own anonymity. If these aren't Cady Noland sculptures, and those responsible for creating them aren't willing to claim them as something else (à la Sturtevant, or some such), then what are they? As much as I would love to see a Cady Noland exhibition, this is the wrong way to go about it, and the wrong way to "incite the public's desire and curiosity to experience the real thing." That desire is already present, at least among cognoscenti. We need instead to stoke Noland's desire to collaborate with a gallery or institution on an exhibition of her own work. This gesture harms that effort.
UPDATE (5/17): A few weeks ago, Edward Winkleman posted an entry on his blog about this topic, and several commenters took me to task for the remarks above; last Friday, Ken Johnson weighed in on the show in the New York Times ("The show might be seen as a chance to think about an oeuvre that . . . remains pertinent to what young artists . . . . Unfortunately, it is easier to see it as an attention-seeking stunt. No one who values Ms. Noland's work is going to care about seeing inexact substitutes, and no serious critical judgments about her art should be based on such ersatz objects."); and now Jerry Saltz has his say in the Village Voice ("The ideas are interesting and the organizers' hearts are in the right place, yet the show falls flat.").