Cadillac
Artist
Kurt Novak
(American)
Date1983
MediumMetal, plexi, wood, radials
Dimensions32 × 44 × 89 in. (81.3 × 111.8 × 226.1 cm)
ClassificationsSculpture
Credit LineGift of the artist
Object numberUAC2527
DescriptionKurt Novak, second-generation Cass Corridor artist that he is, is a master improviser, following in the footsteps of his first-gen predecessors by building sculptures from scraps and industrial materials. Take his Porcupine, made around 1983, now in the Wayne State collection; made from gnawed-looking bits of wood and a scrub brush, cobbled together with screws and bristling with rusty nails, it cleverly evokes the prickly, blunt-nosed forest critter. Since then, Novak has continued to make work using materials and tools that weren’t designed with art-making in mind. Case in point: in 2002, while working as an art director at the Wall Street Journal, he began a series of portraits — photographs of a sort, but glitchy and multi-faceted — “shot” by positioning his subjects on the glass of a flatbed scanner. (His portraits of local artists Steve Foust and Charles McGee are also in the WSU collection.) “I like ‘democratic’ working methods,” Novak told Hyperallergic in 2012, adding that, while anyone can stick their head in a scanner, “hopefully I add a little extra into the equation when I do it.” Even the bio on Novak’s website is a sort of digital “found object” — rather than a page of text, the button links to a screen capture of an email the artist sent to himself. But back in 1983, Novak took on that most quintessential of Detroit tasks: he built a car — a black Cadillac, no less. Close in appearance to a contemporary Coupe de Ville, Novak’s Cadillac is only about three-fifths the size of the real thing, and not quite as luxurious, being knocked together from lumber, strips of metal, and plexiglass, and painted with a matte finish. What this Caddy lacks in élégance, however, it makes up for in imagination. It features custom hood and trunk ornaments and realistic tail lights, plus real rubber tires decorated to more or less approximate whitewalls, and dark-tinted windows for that extra touch of class. It wouldn’t be the last motor vehicle Novak built; in 1992 he created a similarly rough-hewn fire engine. Cadillac is a great example of the folk humor and whimsy that has run through Novak’s work since early in his career.
Text by Sean Bieri
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Born in 1956, Kurt Novak studied at Wayne State University from 1975 to 1980. His scanner images, featuring numerous Motor City creatives, were featured in the exhibit Detroit Portraits at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 2012. He lives in New York City.
