Cart Full of Action

1986

Not on view

Returned to lender

This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.

The title, Cart Full of Action, is at odds with the sculpture itself: an industrial cart, scarred by use, into which an assortment of found automobile fixtures and accessories—hubcaps, a side-view mirror, and cleaning supplies—have been piled in a seemingly haphazard fashion. If the cart promises action at all, it is that of a shopper walking down an aisle or a drifter collecting items along a street. The automobile is an icon of American culture, a symbol of both prosperity and excitement, not to mention virile masculinity. Noland, however, makes of it something other: dissected into parts that amount to no conceivable whole, the car figured here is alluring, perhaps, but impotent, dysfunctional, full only of unrealized potential.

Artwork Details

Overview

Exhibition History

Title: Cart Full of Action
Artist: Cady Noland (American, born Washington, D.C., 1956)
Date: 1986
Medium: Industrial cart, hubcaps, car parts
Dimensions: 40 9/16 × 35 13/16 × 21 5/8 in. (103 × 91 × 54.9 cm)
Classification: Sculpture
Credit Line: Collection Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Gift of Vivian and David Campbell, 1999 (99/495)
Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art