Nick Cave: Property

Explore this recently acquired work by one of America’s foremost contemporary artists. In Property, Nick Cave transforms around 1,000 found objects, laden with symbolic, personal and autobiographical meanings, into a highly charged, socially responsive sculpture.

Property includes a caricatured figure representing a racial stereotype. The title Property recalls slavery, as well as the lifecycle of things sold, used, and discarded, then intentionally appropriated by the artist for creative transformation.

Cave, a native of Missouri, seeks to rehabilitate problematic objects through reuse. He hopes to find empowerment through our engagement with the individual objects and the total work of art. He hopes that the sculpture will cause viewers to ask themselves, “How have you changed? What work have you done?”

Learn More
Research guides for this and other exhibitions are available. We invite you to visit the Spencer Art Reference Library Reading Room for more information.

Nick Cave, American (b. 1959). Property, 2014. Mixed media including found and fabricated objects: iron shoeshine chair, vintage molds, thistle seed, concrete figure, ceramic birds, perfume-bottle birds, metal flowers, and strung beads, 92 × 239 1/2 × 53 inches. Purchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust through the George H. and Elizabeth O. Davis Fund, 2014.50.1-240. © Nick Cave. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.