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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

Show Seen- Nick Cave: Forothermore @ the Guggenheim Museum

No. Not THAT Nick Cave.

THIS Nick Cave. The Artist standing in front of Tondo, 2018, Mixed media including wire, bugle beads, sequined fabric and wood at the opening of Nick Cave: Weather or Not at Jack Shainman May 17, 2018 . Tondo was also on view in Fororthermore.

Nice Cave, the multi-dimensional Artist, that is, who deserves every bit as much notoriety as the other, rightly very well-known Nick Cave, whose work I also admire. This Nick was born in 1959 in Fulton, Missouri, and now lives & works in Chicago, where he has been creating beautiful heart-rending Art for over 30 years. Art, largely created as his response to the world around him marked by racism, profiling and the murders of unarmed Black men and women.

Arm Peace, 2018, Cast bronze, sunburst and vintage tole flowers 85 × 39 × 12 inches. (One of two pieces in the show named Arm Peace.) In my book, this deserves to be “iconic,” as do a number of other pieces in Forothermore.

Even though I had seen a number of his shows at Jack Shainman, his books, and I have been in his presence twice, I was completely unprepared for Nice Cave: Forothermore his mid-career Retrospective at the Guggenheim. I went in believing Mr. Cave is one of the more important Artists working today. I left speechless.

Rescue, 2013, Mixed media including ceramic birds, metal flowers, ceramic Pug, vintage settee, and light fixture 91 × 78 × 54 1/2 inches, front, Nick Cave in collaboration with Bob Faust Wallpaper Near Rescue Works (New Work), 2021, TBC, Dimensions variable, on the back wall.

As a result, I’ve decided to let Mr. Cave, who has a gift for expressing himself in words, to go with his extraordinary gifts for visual expression, do much of the talking in this piece. In Forothermore, a number of the pieces I’d seen over the years, and many others, came together as a startling whole of 49 pieces over three sections: What It Was, What It Is, and What It Shall Be, in 3 locations in the museum. I must admit that I am not a fan of the side galleries the Guggenheim added during their expansion of Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece (which I fought at the time they announced them, and my argument was published in The New York Times, my first published writing). The newer galleries are oddly shaped, because Wright didn’t design these spaces to be galleries. In my view, they detract and distract from Wright’s original intention and design of Art in the Rotunda. That being said, Nick Cave: Forothermore was one of the more important shows in NYC so far this young decade, if not THE most important show I’ve seen. The Guggenheim deserves kudos for bringing it here.

Untitled, 2018, Mixed media including a bronze head and 13 American flag shirts, 23 3/4 × 15 3/4 × 12 inches

At first glance, much of Nick Cave’s Art, particularly his famous Soundsuits, look otherworldly until a close look reveals virtually all of it consists of everyday or found items used in incredibly imaginative ways. Part Sculpture, part Music, part furniture, part Collage, part fashion, and partially created using textile production and jewelry-making techniques, there seems to be no limit to what Mr. Cave’s pieces are or fixed rules about how they’re made. Still, all of what we see now is part of his extraordinary response to the reality of his life and that of other Black men and women.

It started early…

Penny Catcher, 2009, Mixed media including vintage coin toss, suit, and shoes 74 × 23 × 14 inches

“My mother told me when I was, like, eight years old, the complexity of what I would have to deal with. So knowing made me think, ‘I’ve got to build a thick skin. I’ve got to be able to operate in a world…that could work against me as opposed to for me. What do I do with that?'”¹

Sea Sick, 2014. Mixed media including oil paintings, ceramic container, cast hands, and plastic ship 96 × 72 × 10 1/2 inches. At 8 feet tall, with 11 Paintings of the kind of 17th century ships slavers used mounted salon-style, each shown in full sails, almost looking to be going back and forth, at angles to inspire sea sickness among those on board, with a striking head and hands in the center, as if screaming “ENOUGH!” The head was a tobacco holder that was later sold as a spittoon!

“I have been racially profiled. I’m walking home with my portfolio from teaching. I am pulled…surrounded by undercover cops saying, ‘Lie down on the floor’– because the convenience store was robbed down the street. That has been my reality. Get it together up here (points to his head). Psychologically, I have to really get it together. And I just have to get quiet–to put it in perspective and to not lash out into rage. And if I do, lashing out for me is creating this (a Soundsuit). All of that becomes the impulse to create.”²

Soundsuit 2012 Mixed media including embroidery, fabric, vintage toys, rug, and mannequin Soundsuit: 127 × 98 × 93 inches

Best known to this point for his ongoing series of Soundsuits– works that combine all the processes listed earlier in an ultimate manifestation of that “thick skin” he referred to, that a performer then wears as one of many in  one of Mr. Cave’s joyous and bombastic performances. For display, the performer is replaced with a mannequin. The range of materials they have included over the years would fill a Sears Roebuck catalog. In spite of the long history of both fashion and theater, I have seen virtually nothing like them³. The Soundsuits brought him immediate fame. Their origin may be lesser known-

“The first Soundsuit was in ’92 in response to the Rodney King incident, the L.A. riots. I was sitting in the park one day  and just sort of thinking about, What does it feel like to be  discarded, dismissed, profiled?
There was this twig on the ground. And I looked at that twig as something discarded. And then I proceeded to just start collecting the twigs in the park. And I brought them all back to the studio. And then I started to build this sculpture. I started to realize that the moment I started to move in it, it made sound. Then it just literally put everything in perspective. I was building this suit of armor, something that I could shield myself from the world and society. And so out of that came this sculpture-performative kind of work.”⁴

Detail of a Soundsuit made largely from twigs. Soundsuit, 2011, Twigs, wire, upholstery, basket, and metal armature, 83 × 27 × 40 inches. Seen in full from the side in the next picture.

That “discarded” and “forgotten” twig set a precedent for the materials he’s used in his Art since, a collection of objects and materials that seems encyclopedic, some of which speak to Mr. Cave of his childhood, when objects like figurines were cherished family possessions. This creates a duality whereby even though a number of the objects he incorporates are offensive, even disgusting (like the spittoon in Sea Sick), it’s very hard not to see “beauty” and “Art” in Nick Cave’s work, particularly in how masterfully he combines everything in ways that are reminiscent of Duchamp, Rauschenberg and Betye Saar, among others, though in entirely his own way. In so doing, he’s forged a style without having one style. Along with the beauty, there’s an undeniable joy in a good deal of his work, which reaches its zenith, perhaps, in his live performances with dancers performing in his Soundsuits in a communal celebration.

Soundsuits. From left, Soundsuit, 2022 with vintage bunny, Soundsuit, 2015 with synthetic hair, Soundsuit 9:29, 2021-2022, Soundsuit, 2011 shown in the prior picture, Nick Cave, Soundsuit 9:29, 2021, Soundsuit, 2019, and Soundsuit 8:46, 2021, far right.

Yet, in spite of their outward appearance, all is not joy with his Soundsuits. Mr. Cave reveals how he sees them-

“I don’t ever see the “Soundsuits” as fun. They really are coming from a very dark place. The “Soundsuits” hide gender, race, class. And they force you to look at the work without judgment. You know, we tend to want to categorize everything. We tend to want to find its place. How do we, sort of, be one on one with something that is unfamiliar?”⁵

“I think after the first Soundsuit, I had a different approach to art making. And I realized that I was an artist with a conscience. The moment I did was the moment that  my life literally turned upside-down. I think it’s just me kind of experimenting. It’s like, you know, a scientist  exploring alternative ideas.”⁶

TM13, 2015. Mixed media including vintage blow molds, pony beads, pipe cleaners, mannequin, and garments, 89 × 48 × 49 inches. The Trayvon Martin Soundsuit.

“Trayvon Martin is a new work  that was shown at Cranbrook. It’s made up of a Black mannequin dressed  in a hoodie and sneakers and jeans. And then surrounding its body  is these plastic blow molds. Which are, like sometimes at Halloween, there are these plastic forms  that are set out in yards. And so they are surrounding this  sort of figure almost as guardians. But then over top of the entire structure is  this web that’s constructed out of pony beads. So from a distance, it looks like this amazing sort of gold  sculptural form until you get up close and you realize that there  is someone trapped inside.” ⁷

Wall Relief, 2013, Mixed media including ceramic birds, metal flowers, afghans, strung beads, crystals and antique gramophone
4 panels: 97 × 74 × 21 in., each. Perhaps the most complex work on view among many very complex pieces.

“The title (“Forothermore”) is a neologism, a new word that reflects the artist’s lifelong commitment to creating space for those who feel marginalized by dominant society and culture—especially working-class communities and queer people of color. The show both highlighted the development of Cave’s singular art practice and interrogated the promises, fulfilled or broken, that the late 20th and early 21st centuries offered to the ‘other,'” the Guggenheim said.

Untitled, 2018, Mixed media including round table, clay head, piano bench, carved head with vintage tole flowers, child pink chair, 19 carved heads, 1 carved eagle, cast polyurethane hands, 52 1/8 × 52 1/8 × 61 inches

“You know, I think at the end of the day,  it’s me giving back to the community  and being this sort of change agent. I want to change our way of  engaging with one another. I want to use art as a form of diplomacy. That’s why I’m in this state of urgency right now. And I don’t know. I just feel so unsettled. I’m doing what I’m doing, but I’m not sure if it’s happening fast enough.”⁸

Detail of Tondo, 2022, Metal mesh, hardware cloth, bugle beads, wire, sequin fabric and wood.

Nick Cave is rewriting the power of Art, to paraphrase Simon Schama. He’s doing it by channeling horror and pain- both experienced by others, and by himself, into “lashing out” by creating. And, he’s doing so in ways never before seen. I see a lot of Art, and I see a lot of shows. It’s not often that I am awestruck by an Artist’s creativity, but I am by Nick Cave’s. Still, it’s hard to really get a full sense of Mr. Cave’s extraordinary gifts. If Nick Cave can produce such beautiful and powerful work in a world like this, I can’t help but wonder what he’d create in a world without racism.

*- Soundtrack for this piece is “Peace,” by Gil Scott-Heron, a Bonus track from the 2014 reissue of his 1971 album Pieces of a Man.

Thank you, Maddie.

SPECIAL ADDENDUM- The NYC MTA recently completed the installation of Nick Cave’s monumental, 4,600 square feet, 3-part, permanent Public Art piece, Each One, Every One, Equal All, in the subway under Times Square, the latest in their absolutely stellar on-going series of Public Art projects for the NYC subway. It rivals Sarah Sze’s entire subway station installation (which I showed here) for the largest Art work in the NYC subway system. It took multiple trips to fully see the whole thing, and my look at it can be seen here.

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