COLLECTOR SUES AFTER CADY NOLAND DISOWNS ARTWORK
Artist Cady Noland has sparked a lawsuit by disowning her work Log Cabin Blank With Screw Eyes and Cafe Door, 1990, upon discovering that it was altered, according to Artnet’s Eileen Kinsella.
A trustee at Cleveland’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Scott Mueller, bought the piece in 2013 through Galerie Michael Janssen for $1.4 million, the lawsuit alleges. According to Kinsella, after rotting wood in the piece was replaced, the artist sent Mueller a handwritten note. “This is not an artwork,” it read; Noland took issue with the fact that the sculpture, in her words, was “repaired by a consevator [ sic ] BUT THE ARTIST WASN‘T CONSULTED.” Mueller, now, alleges that the Janssen Gallery hasn‘t returned his $800,000 transfer. Kinsella points out, though, that the deal spelled out the fact that “the original logs of the work’s facade were refabricated and/or that any original material of the Work may have been discarded or destroyed without the Artist’s knowledge and/or approval.” A buy-back clause was included in the contract as well.
In 2012, Swiss art dealer Marc Jancou brought suit against Noland after she disowned Cowboys Milking, a 1990 work he’d hoped to sell at Sotheby’s.
