Bruce Nauman

“I’ve always had overlapping ways of going about my work,” Bruce Nauman once remarked. “I’ve never been able to stick to one thing.”1 For more than 50 years, he has worked in every conceivable artistic medium, dissolving established genres and inventing new ones in the process. His expanded notion of sculpture admits wax casts and neon signs, bodily contortions and immersive video environments. Coming of age amid the political and social upheavals of the 1960s, Nauman never adhered to rigid distinctions between the arts, but rather has staked his career on “investigating the possibilities of what art may be.”2
After graduating from art school at the age of 24, Nauman took up residence in a vacant grocery store in San Francisco. Alone in this studio with time on his hands, he resolved that anything he did there could be art: “Sometimes the activity involve[d] making something, and sometimes the activity [was] the piece.”3 He often recorded his efforts on camera, as in Composite Photo of Two Messes on the Studio Floor (1967), which shows the plaster dust and refuse that litters his workspace—the dregs of the creative act. And in a series of now-iconic videos, he used his own body as raw material, engaging in humble, repetitive tasks that could be maddening (Bouncing in the Corner, 1968), coy (Walk with Contrapposto, 1968) or haltingly graceful (Slow Angle Walk [Beckett Walk], 1968). Each tedious exercise drones on for an hour—the standard length of a videotape—and subjects artist and viewer alike to a minor test of endurance.
By the 1980s, Nauman’s setups were more elaborate and the tone of the work more caustic. Anxiety courses through a series of sculptures that evoke absent bodies. In White Anger, Red Danger, Yellow Peril, Black Death (1984), a pair of steel girders hang from the ceiling and impale three handmade chairs, while a fourth chair dangles just beyond the armature’s reach. The toppled chairs are rendered useless and none appear intact, their missing legs or sunken seats suggesting something gone awry. The severity of Learned Helplessness in Rats (Rock and Roll Drummer) (1988) is also typical of this period: the installation pairs an empty Plexiglas maze with footage of a rat and the din of drumbeats. Within this atmosphere of an abortive lab experiment, the artist equates physical entrapment and mental tension.
In recent years, the tenor of Nauman’s work has become more meditative and its appearance more refined. The sound sculpture Days forms an audible passageway that is imposing yet nearly invisible. Here Nauman fills a gallery with a double row of speakers, which emit a surge of voices reciting the days of the week out of order. By tampering with the routine progression from one day to the next, he disrupts the conventions by which we mark the passage of time. Pared down in appearance but profound in scope, Days invites reflection on how we measure the unfolding of a human life.
Nauman often circles back to his earlier concerns with new urgency. In Contrapposto Studies i through vii (2015/2016), he reinvests a prior work with increased formal complexity and emotional range. This multi-channel projection finds the artist on familiar ground, retracing the steps of his Walk with Contrapposto. That 1968 video was Nauman’s riff on a Classical pose, designed to enliven static sculpture and lend the body a pleasing curve. A stationary camera filmed the lithe young artist as he paced up and down a corridor, swinging his hips from side to side. The 2016 work again finds him walking the length of his studio in a grubby T-shirt and jeans, but his image now echoes across seven towering projections that leave the body in disarray. The effects of age are manifest in the artist’s heavier torso and wavering balance, making Contrapposto Studies an exceptionally clear-eyed portrayal of how time unmakes the body.
Introduction by Taylor Walsh, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Drawings and Prints, 2018
Bruce Nauman to Willoughby Sharp, Arts Magazine 44:5 (March 1970), reprinted in Nauman, Please Pay Attention Please: Bruce Nauman’s Words. Writing and Interviews, ed. Janet Kraynak. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2003, p. 119.
Nauman, quoted in Coosje van Bruggen, Bruce Nauman. Rizzoli, 1988, p. 7.
Nauman to Willoughby Sharp, Arts Magazine 44:5 (March 1970), reprinted in Nauman, Please Pay Attention Please: Bruce Nauman’s Words. Writing and Interviews, ed. Janet Kraynak. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2003, p. 123.
- Introduction
- Bruce Nauman (born December 6, 1941) is an American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. Nauman lives near Galisteo, New Mexico.
- Wikidata
- Q168665
- Introduction
- Nauman uses himself as the focus of videos, performances and neon work, often exploring word play and moral dilemmas.
- Nationality
- American
- Gender
- Male
- Roles
- Artist, Performance Artist, Photographer, Sculptor, Video Artist
- Name
- Bruce Nauman
- Ulan
- 500118742
Exhibitions
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413: Touching the Void
Ongoing
MoMA
Collection gallery
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413: Breaking the Mold
Oct 21, 2019–Sep 20, 2020
MoMA
Collection gallery
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Bruce Nauman: Disappearing Acts
Oct 21, 2018–Feb 25, 2019
MoMA, MoMA PS1
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The Long Run
Nov 11, 2017–May 5, 2019
MoMA
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From the Collection:
1960–1969 Mar 26, 2016–Mar 19, 2017
MoMA
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Bruce Nauman has
103 exhibitionsonline.
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Bruce Nauman Untitled 1965
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Bruce Nauman Study related to the sculpture Storage Capsule for the Right Rear Quarter of My Body 1966
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Bruce Nauman Collection of Various Flexible Materials Separated by Layers of Grease with Holes the Size of My Waist and Wrists 1966
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Bruce Nauman Composite Photo of Two Messes on the Studio Floor 1967
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Bruce Nauman Thighing (Blue) 1967
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Bruce Nauman My Last Name Extended Vertically 14 Times 1967
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William Anthony, Wall Batterton, Congo (a Chimpanzee), Edward Fitzgerald, Neil Jenney, Angus MacLise, Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono, Mel Ramos, Robert Rohm, William Schwedler, Diane Wakaski, Lawrence Weiner, Various Artists S.M.S. No. 5 1968
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Bruce Nauman Footsteps from S.M.S. No. 5 1968
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Bruce Nauman Bouncing in the Corner, No. 1 1968
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Bruce Nauman Revolving Upside Down 1968
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Bruce Nauman Stamping in the Studio 1968
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Bruce Nauman Art Make-Up: No. 1 White, No. 2 Pink, No. 3 Green, No. 4 Black 1967-1968
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Bruce Nauman Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square 1967-68
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Bruce Nauman Bouncing Two Balls Between the Floor and Ceiling with Changing Rhythms 1967-1968
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Bruce Nauman Dance or Exercise on the Perimeter of a Square (Square Dance) 1967-1968
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Bruce Nauman Playing a Note on the Violin While I Walk Around the Studio 1967-1968
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Bruce Nauman Violin Film #1 (Playing The Violin As Fast As I Can) 1967-1968
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Bruce Nauman Pinchneck 1968
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Bruce Nauman Slow Angle Walk (Beckett Walk) 1968
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Bruce Nauman Walk with Contrapposto 1968
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Bruce Nauman Flesh to White to Black to Flesh 1968
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Bruce Nauman Wall/Floor Positions 1968
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Bruce Nauman Lip Sync 1969
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Bruce Nauman Bouncing in the Corner, No. 2: Upside Down 1969
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Bruce Nauman Untitled 1969
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Bruce Nauman Gauze 1969
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Bruce Nauman Manipulating a Fluorescent Tube 1969
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Bruce Nauman Pacing Upside Down 1969
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Bruce Nauman Violin Tuned D.E.A.D. 1969
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Bruce Nauman Pulling Mouth 1969
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Various Artists, David Bradshaw, Eva Hesse, Stephen Kaltenbach, Bruce Nauman, Alan Saret, Richard Serra, Keith Sonnier 7 Objects/69 1969
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Bruce Nauman Record from 7 Objects/69 1969
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Bruce Nauman Studies for Holograms 1970
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Bruce Nauman L A Air from Artists & Photographs 1970
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Various Artists, Mel Bochner, Christo, Jan Dibbets, Tom Gormley, Dan Graham, Douglas Huebler, Allan Kaprow, Michael Kirby, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Robert Rauschenberg, Edward Ruscha, Robert Smithson, Bernar Venet, Andy Warhol Artists & Photographs 1965–70, published 1970
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Bruce Nauman Raw-War 1971
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Bruce Nauman Untitled 1971
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Bruce Nauman Untitled 1971
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Bruce Nauman Perfect Door/Perfect Odor/Perfect Rodo 1972
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Bruce Nauman Untitled 1973
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Bruce Nauman Perfect Door 1973
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Bruce Nauman Perfect Odor 1973
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Bruce Nauman Perfect Rodo 1973
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Bruce Nauman Clear Vision 1973
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Bruce Nauman Untitled (Study for Perfect Door, Perfect Odor, Perfect Rodo) 1973
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Bruce Nauman Perfect Odor 1973
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Bruce Nauman Tony Sinking into the Floor, Face Up, and Face Down 1973
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Bruce Nauman Elke Allowing the Floor to Rise Up Over Her, Face Up 1973
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