Robert C. Morgan

Nicola L is interested in the sublime aspect of the female persona in a way that is uniquely her own. Rather than ownership of these personas, she wants to develop their mystique — not so much as a memorial, but as a kind of living texture, a sublimation of life, love, and art, of the femme fatale — but in a paradoxically absurd manner. The nine famous celebrity women she has chosen do not stop in time. Rather they are destined to an immortal reign like the kings of Byzantium. But unlike the kings of Byzantine, her women caricatures offer a sensibility that charges us with new energy. Through them, we discover a way of seeking sensuality through the seduction of their images. The hysteria of these women is really our hysteria, our projection, as to who and what they might be. Like all caricatures in the worlds of entertainment and politics where women are involved, the underlying presumption is that hysteria surrounds this ongoing endeavor, this speculation on the feminine. but this hysteria need not be the case. We might consider this speculation as a kind of festival that suggests the eternal seduction of glamour and coy intrigue within the
wondrous shape of these marvelous creatures, the eternal feminine that Nicola L has proposed.

“Freud said , ‘L’hysterie est une carricature d’oeuvre d’art’” by Robert C. Morgan
NYC, March 30, 2006