Apocalypse: Sandy Skoglund’s Radioactive Cats acts as societal critique

A clowder of neon–green cats overtakes an otherwise average—if monochromatic—kitchen in Sandy Skoglung’s Radioactive Cats. Their glowing bodies cast a sickly glow against the walls of the set, fostering a bizarre tone for the viewer. This work blends sculpture, painting, and photography in a comment on the human condition.

Meticulous in construction yet enigmatic in meaning, Radioactive Cats is a photographic critique of the human experience intentionally open to many interpretations. In her most famous work, Skoglund placed 25 unnaturally colored cats around this set of a colorless tenement. She sculpted the life-size felines from clay, chicken wire, and plaster before painting and staging them. An elderly couple, the artist’s neighbors at the time, exist among the cats, their backs facing the camera. Their clothing, along with the furniture and the walls, are a brownish gray, making the neon paint seem to glow even brighter. 

This large image could be read as a meditation on human relations and aging or a comment on nuclear proliferation, as the title implies. According to the artist, herself, in Sandy Skoglund: Reality Under Siege: A Retrospective, the work was meant to champion animals as survivors of an inevitable apocalypse: “The purpose there was to undermine the stereotype in our culture of the cute, domesticated pet. The cats are meant to dominate the scene as survivors in a postnuclear situation because they’ve adapted by turning green. In some ways, the piece proposes that the ultimate postapocalyptic, postcolonial situation would be the triumph of the animal world that we’ve manipulated for so long.” Radioactive Cats is part of a series of two photos; the companion piece is titled Beyond the Door.

The multimedia artist is known for her unorthodox methods and commentative tableau work, a style of storytelling that features motionless figures representing a scene. Hailing from Weymouth, Massachusetts, Skoglund received an undergraduate degree in studio art and art history at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts before studying filmmaking, intaglio printmaking, multimedia art, and painting during graduate school at the University of Iowa. Shortly after earning a master of fine arts degree and a master’s degree, she moved to New York City to begin her career as a conceptual artist. 

Following a desire to document her work, Skoglund taught herself photography, and by the late 70s, her work helped popularize the genre of staged photography that influenced other photographers, including Cindy Sherman and David LaChapelle. The Holden Luntz Gallery, the artist’s representative, describes her practice as bridging the boundaries between “sculpture, installation art, and photography having become renowned for her large format photographs of the original impermanent installations.” Today, Skoglund is a distinguished professor in the Department of Arts, Culture, and Media at Rutgers University–Newark. 

Because of light sensitivity, works on paper, including Radioactive Cats, are displayed for limited times only. However, this and other prints, drawings, and photographs can be viewed by request in the Museum’s Print Study Room.