Lot 496: Cady Noland (b. 1956)

Cady Noland (b. 1956)
Untitled (The Lincoln Years)
silkscreen ink on aluminum
48 x 120 in. (121.92 x 304.8 cm)
Executed in 1989. This work is from an edition of two.

Hamburg, Kunstverein Hamburg, Fast Forward "trade marks", May - June 1998.

American Fine Arts Co., New York
Private collection, Paris
Jerome de Noirmont, Paris
Private Collection, New York

Executed in 1989, Untitled (The Lincoln Years) is an excellent example of Cady Noland's sociopolitical artwork in which she aims to expose an entertainment obsessed American psyche. In particular, Noland condemns the media's impulse at all costs to satiate the American publics appetite for constant entertainment.

In the present work, the viewer is confronted with enlarged reproductions of pages from a history book recounting details of President Abraham Lincoln's assassination on April 14th, 1865. The dry encyclopedia style text recounts the bare facts of this historical event--how Lincoln's successor learns of the shooting--and images of the clothes the President wore that night. Due to the works scale, an encounter with the gruesome details is unavoidable. By using silkscreen, an artistic method associated with the idea of mass-production, Noland reduces the 16th US President into an object of popular consumer culture. Furthermore, the reflective aluminum panel, possibly urges the viewer to see him or herself as part of the larger cultural problem.