Joan, is there one law?

Cady Noland explores how rituals of pain, violence, and public humiliation are embedded in the American consciousness. She invokes the obsession with celebrity culture and the private lives of public figures, which is calamitously narrated in the popular press. Joan, is there one law? cites the acrimonious 1987 divorce trial of British actress Joan Collins and her fourth husband, Swedish former pop singer Peter Holm, which was headline news and tabloid fodder. The reproduced image of Holm protesting his eviction from Collins’s Beverly Hills home plays with the text of the picketing signs, highlighting how he publicized his “homelessness” during the settlement phase of the trial.