Cady Noland
American, born 1956
Joan, is there one law?
INV-2424
Cady Noland
American, born 19561994
Joan, is there one law?
Cady Noland American, born 1956 →sculpture
Date
1994
Medium
Silkscreen ink on steel
Dimensions
152.7 × 244.5 × 3 cm (60 1/8 × 96 1/4 × 1/8 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Gift of Marilyn and Larry Fields
Cady Noland explores how rituals of pain, violence, and public humiliation are embedded in the American consciousness. She invokes the obsession with celebrity culture and the private lives of public figures, which is calamitously narrated in the popular press. Joan, is there one law? cites the acrimonious 1987 divorce trial of British actress Joan Collins and her fourth husband, Swedish former pop singer Peter Holm, which was headline news and tabloid fodder. The reproduced image of Holm protesting his eviction from Collins’s Beverly Hills home plays with the text of the picketing signs, highlighting how he publicized his “homelessness” during the settlement phase of the trial.
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