"Cady Noland Approximately," Apr. 21-May 21, 2006, at Triple Candie, 461 West 126th Street, New York, N.Y. 10027
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"Cady Noland Approximately" is, according to its organizers, "the first survey ever devoted to Cady Noland's oeuvre." This esthetic act of karaoke, identity theft, body snatching and entrepreneurial table turning, created by Shelly Bancroft and Peter Nesbett, co-directors of Triple Candie, a not-for-profit space that they have dubbed "Harlem's alternative for contemporary art," is a slap in the face, an act of misguided love and an extremely challenging, maybe even radical idea that could end up a fascinating footnote in future art history books. According to Bancroft and Nesbett, "The exhibition consists of objects re-created by the co-directors and four artist-assistants from images of Noland's art found on the Internet and in exhibition catalogues."
None of the work is for sale. Bancroft and Nesbett claim the exhibition "is meant to incite the public's desire and curiosity to experience the real thing, which remains frustratingly elusive." As a huge Noland fan, I know where they're coming from. Noland, not Barney, Hirst or Gonzalez-Torres, is the crucial link between late-1980s commodity art and much that has followed; she is the portal through which enormous amounts of appropriational, political and compositional notions pass. So mercurial, fierce and originally poetic is she that I think of her as our Rimbaud.
Then, about a decade ago, for whatever reason, she absented herself. Noland hasn't had a gallery or museum exhibition in more than 10 years. When her work turns up in group shows it is said that she tries to have it removed. Thus, the idea of any kind of Cady Noland show is mouthwatering. Nevertheless, judging from the results of this exhibition, if I were Cady Noland, I'd think about getting a lawyer to get medieval on Triple Candie. Rather than creating a shining moment of revival, an artistic revelation or a shrine, Bancroft and Nesbett are unintentionally playing the roles of Rupert Pupkin and Masha, who in the 1983 Martin Scorsese film The King of Comedy are so enamored of Jerry Langford, a talk show host, that they kidnap him.
This isn't a kidnapping. But remaking Noland's work without her permission is, in a sense, holding art for ransom. It's also nothing new. The art world has grappled with ideas about authenticity, the aura of the artist, originality and transgression since Dada, Duchamp, Hugo Ball and Walter Benjamin. Ball said, "Ideas are only labels;" Duchamp that "artists should be completely non-existent." Warhol maintained he wanted "to be like a machine." Recently, Elaine Sturtevant, Richard Pettibone, Richard Prince and Sherrie Levine have made renditions of other artists' works. Now gallerists are doing it.
"Cady Noland Approximately" tests these ideas and practices in ways that are at once admirable, complex and vexing. The show asks several pressing questions, among them, do artists sacrifice their rights to anyone who wants to study their output? And is the art world only willing to grant permission to appropriate to artists or can art dealers get in on the act as well? A weirder wrinkle is that this isn't the first time that Bancroft and Nesbett have gone around an artist's wishes. Just three months ago they mounted "David Hammonds: The Unauthorized Retrospective," an exhibition consisting of scores of xeroxes of Hammonds' work. I liked the tribute-band aspect of that show, although I later heard from a third party that Hammonds was livid.
"Cady Noland Approximately" goes far further and onto trickier ground. Bancroft and Nesbett make no claims about these being real Nolands. The checklist explicitly describes how these works were fabricated. One entry reads, "Noland used 34 A-frames in the original; for this exhibition 28 were used; Noland used a single wood plank that ran through all the A-frames, this piece is made from short, individual planks that were collected from Triple Candie's parking lot, painted white and assembled to create the illusion of a single plank. . ." Another entry begins, "We were unable to locate the same stanchion bases Noland used, so substituted sign bases that we rented from a movie prop company. . ." Bancroft and Nesbett, who obviously love and admire this work, have gone to great lengths to make clear that these pieces are only approximations.
The ideas are interesting and the organizers' hearts are in the right place, yet the show falls flat. Ironically and significantly, the problem isn't that these are para-Nolands; it's that the room feels so visually inert and lackluster. In a way "Cady Noland Approximately" makes one believe in artistic aura again. You start to understand why artists are so controlling about their art and also just how much of a spatial and material genius Noland was.
"Cady Noland Approximately" will not explain to the many who have never seen an exhibition of her work why seeing Noland's art was once like taking an esthetic joyride. To grasp the envelope-pushing impact of Noland's work, consider the famous story about Jackson Pollock, who, after completing an early drip painting, turned to his wife, painter Lee Krasner, and asked not if this was a good or bad work, but "Is this a painting?" The only time I had that kind of clueless, desperate, scared, amazed reaction in the face of contemporary art was with Noland's 1989 debut exhibition at the old American Fine Arts gallery. I didn't know what I was looking at or even if it was art. I was lost. Noland opened the door to a vast chamber within the house of art that no one knew existed. It was striking and unforgettable. This show is neither.
Gepetto-Bot
Joe Fig is a sculptor who is obsessed with painters, which may mean he's a painter at heart, but never mind. In the past he's made meticulous small-scaled reconstructions of the studios of Barnett Newman, Willem de Kooning, Clyfford Still and Andy Warhol. For his second show at Plus Ultra, Fig fetishizes contemporary painters like never before in one large-sized rendition of the twin Long Island studios of Eric Fischl and April Gornick, and a series of 16 small-scaled models of various artists’ work tables. Every one of these is detailed down to tiny paint-encrusted palettes, teeny crumpled drawings, minuscule extension cords snaking on floors, plastic in the garbage cans and discarded paint rags.
Each model is accompanied by an interview with the subject about his or her painterly practice. Here you'll learn that in her studio Dana Schutz listens to right-wing radio all night long to get herself "pissed off," that Gregory Amenoff once hurled an ax at the wall in frustration and that he paints between two huge old speakers (rock on, Gregory), and that Matthew Ritchie, who observes that "monkeys can paint too," thinks that "graduate schools are a sham and should be abolished straight away."
Too bad, because from the sound of this interview Ritchie seems like he'd be a fantastic teacher. Regardless, Fig zeros in on a fact that young artists are rarely told in art school: They are embarking on a career in which they will spend almost ungodly amounts of time totally alone in the self-made universe that is the studio. The thing that makes Fig's art more than crafty kitsch and stops him from being just a Gepetto-bot is that he's less interested in the artistic product than he is enamored of the creative process. This brings his work close to phenomenology.
Joe Fig, Apr. 27-May 27, 2006, at Plus Ultra Gallery, 637 West 27th Street, New York, N.Y. 10001
JERRY SALTZ is art critic for the Village Voice, where this article first appeared. He can be reached at [email protected]
