Nick Cave: Forothermore

by Damita Jo Freeman (Primary Contributor), Nona Hendryx (Primary Contributor), Linda Johnson Rice (Primary Contributor)

With a wealth of images and commentary, this is the essential career survey of Cave's socially responsive art The definitive volume on the ever-evolving and shape-shifting work of the Chicago-based artist, Nick Forothermore highlights the way Cave’s practice has shifted and continues to shift in response to our history and current moment of cultural crisis. Including several new, never-before-seen works, the book shows an artist at the height of his power.
Addressing topics ranging from art history to social justice, Nick Forothermore includes essays from Naomi Beckwith, Romi Crawford, Antwaun Sargent, Malik Gaines, Krista Thompson and Meida Teresa McNeal. Punctuating these contributions are interviews with the artist exploring his life, work and teaching practice, as well as a roundtable discussion between Cave and dancer Damita Jo Freeman, musician Nona Hendryx and publisher Linda Johnson Rice on Cave's art and influences, as well as pivotal cultural phenomena from Soul Train to Ebony magazine. Nick Forothermore reveals the way art, music, fashion and performance can help us envision a more just future.
Nick Cave (born 1959) is an artist and educator working between the visual and performing arts through a wide range of mediums, including sculpture, installation, video, sound and performance. Cave is well known for his Soundsuits, sculptural forms based on the scale of his body, initially created in direct response to the police beating of Rodney King in 1991. Cave has had major exhibitions at MASS MoCA (2016), Cranbrook Art Museum (2015), Saint Louis Art Museum (2014–15), ICA Boston (2014), Denver Art Museum (2013), Seattle Art Museum (2011) and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (2009), among others. Cave lives and works in Chicago.

Genres: Art

296 pages, Hardcover

Published June 21, 2022

Reviews

[Liv · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since the early 2000s, Nick Cave's work has probably been the most easily recognizable contemporary art in the U.S. His over-the-top exhibitions of combining found objects are colorful, loud, and moving. I've been fortunate to see a couple of his live performance pieces, but even when his art is still, there's a great sense of movement and energy.

This book looking back at his career highlights not only his catalogue of work, but through timelines, essays, and interviews, tells of his Civil Rights-Era upbringing and how his first Sound Suit creation was a response to the Rodney King beating and L.A. riots. Forothermore details how his work is an intersection of Blackness and Queerness and how all art is political.

The book starts and ends with a dedication to "rest in power" and a listing of BIPOC killed by police between May of 2020 and 2021. The pages keep turning as the names sadly go on and on, until the first piece you encounter is Cave's "Speak Louder." The volume takes you on a beautiful and color-rich journey of what in Cave's words are "what it is, what it was, and what it shall be." His works are both fanciful and a call to action.

"In Cave's art, material realities simultaneously encompass journeys of Black oppression and excellence. His reconstitution of found materials that are often uncommon in contemporary fashion design--but which are found in histories of costume and craft--is an experiment in exceeding traditions as a way of extending the possibilities of identity. It's a re-stylization of the conditions of the present into an aesthetic politic that provides a space of hope for the Black body. It is a constructed space where the Black body can transcend the violence prescribed to Black identity with glamour, authority, and noise. Cave's is a language that is built on the past, operates from the present, but thrusts the imagination far into the future."

[A · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are two well-known Nick Caves. This Nick Cave is an artist and activist. From the work in this catalogue, he is full of energy and not only consumed with his work, but community.

[Jack Waters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incorrectly assumed this was about Nick Cave the musician. It's about the Chicago-based artist instead. But at least it was a worthwhile mistake.