Untitled (Nicole)
This New York Times obituary is pitch-perfect in every way except for one: Nicole Kidman is still very much alive. McEwen made his name forging death announcements for celebrities, politicians, and art-world peers, none of whom had actually died. Anticipating today’s rhetoric of "fake news" by more than a decade, McEwen follows tabloid tales to their logical extreme, mining the discrepancy between true and invented stories. A skilled mimic, he recreates not only the graphic appearance of the obituary page—digitally formatted, then photocopied, enlarged, and scanned, before finally being printed as a photograph—but also the dry, expository language of the form, which he learned firsthand; before becoming an artist, McEwen wrote real obituaries for London’s Daily Telegraph.
Artwork Details
- Title: Untitled (Nicole)
- Artist: Adam McEwen (British, born London, 1965)
- Date: 2004
- Medium: Chromogenic print
- Dimensions: Frame: 40 × 28 1/2 in. (101.6 × 72.4 cm)
- Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Gift of Erica and Joseph Samuels, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary, 2019
- Object Number: 2019.274
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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