布鲁斯·瑙曼认领

In his corridor pieces, Nauman’s sculpture assumes the dimensions of architecture. The spaces are often claustrophobic yet they seem to extend indefinitely, like a corridor seen in a dream. Here, the sense of infinite extension is created by a mirror set at an angle at the end of the corridor. The width of the corridor has been narrowed so that it is impossible to walk through it, thereby heightening the sense of eerie isolation.

Nauman''s work often antagonises or disorients. The ''No'' of this lithograph is in keeping with his refusal to offer solace or affirmation to the viewer. Its immediacy also demonstrate Nauman''s ongoing commitment to making what he describes as ''art that was just there all at once. Like getting hit in the face with a baseball bat. Or better, like getting hit in the back of the neck. You never see it coming; it just knocks you down''.

Bruce Nauman’s performances , films and video works often use language games and repetition to explore the nature of language and perception. In this work two monitors are placed at head height, so that the performers stare out directly at the viewer. Two professional actors recite the same series of one hundred phrases, beginning in a flat tone but becoming more emotional. Because they are talking at different speeds, the actors fall out of step with each other, and the continuously looped videos become out of sequence. Many of the statements imply moral judgements which, through repetition, seem increasingly threatening. Bruce Nauman was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1941. He now lives and works in New Mexico.

This word-image is one of a number of works involving word play created by Nauman during the 1970s. He compared making this lithograph to chiselling stone, to create a shallow relief . Nauman has connected his word works, involving anagrams, palindromes and mirror images, to his interest in the image reversal that took place when he removed the moulds from his early fibre glass sculptures . The frequently disturbing or ambiguous nature of the semi-concealed messages in the word-works is in contrast to the spare elegance of the images. Here the message discovered within the letters is the brutal phrase 'Rape Me'.

Setting a Good Corner (Allegory and Metaphor) is a single-channel video work in colour with stereo sound. The video is presented on a television monitor and runs continuously on a loop. From a stationary position the camera records Bruce Nauman as he builds a corner fence on his property, Las Madres Ranch in New Mexico. The landscape seen within the frame of the video is flat and fairly dry, with grassland and bushes visible in the background. The video is in real time and runs for fifty-nine minutes and eighteen seconds, just under one hour, which is one of the standard lengths of video cassette tapes. When exhibited the monitor is presented on a plinth or trolley. This copy of the video is number 27 in an edition of 40. The video begins with text scrolling up the screen, white on a black background, introducing the work and the task Nauman is seen performing in it. In this text Nauman notes that a good fence cannot be built or maintained without a good corner, that the posts are made of nine-foot long cedar railroad ties (railway sleepers), and that the wire he uses is smooth, not barbed, so as to avoid snagging his clothes and using obscene language. Nauman also states that he learnt this way of setting a corner from one Gene Thornton, though the mistakes he makes are his, not Thornton’s. As the action of the video begins there are already two sturdy wooden posts in the ground, to the left of the frame. Nauman is seen digging a deep hole using a red vehicle with an attachment that bores into the ground. He uses a spade and other tools to remove excess soil from the hole in which he then sets a third post, forming a corner. Of the nine-foot post, about half its length is buried in the ground for stability. Nauman then places wooden crossbeams, or ‘H braces’, between the posts, and pulls wire diagonally across them. The last thing he does is to bring in a green gate, which he places to the left of the frame, against the central post. Because the video is not cut or edited, it also records everyday occurrences such as Nauman’s wife and dogs visiting him while he works. At the end of the video white text scrolls up the screen on a black background. This text is introduced as an epilogue and includes the comments of Nauman’s neighbour and partner on the ranch, Bill Riggins. Riggins, more familiar with ranch work than Nauman, notes the hardness of the clay, and that Nauman tamped the fence posts in well, making sure there were no pockets of air that would allow the posts to work lose. Riggins also advises that Nauman should always keep his tools in the same place so that he can find them and that he should sharpen his chainsaw. Setting a Good Corner comes out of Nauman’s concerns, which began earlier in his career, with duration and time, ‘where you could control the length of the film or videotape or activity by having a specific job. You began when the job started; and when the job was over, the film was over.’ (Nauman in ‘“Setting a Good Corner”: Bruce Nauman’, Art21 , November 2011, http://www.art21.org/texts/bruce-naman/interview-bruce-nauman-setting-a-good-corner , accessed 11 December 2013). This became a way to structure the work, so that once the task was set Nauman did not have to concern himself with the outcome, but rather focus on completing the job. In that it records the undertaking of everyday manual labour – an unexceptional chore undertaken by all those who live and work on a ranch – the video documents an aspect of the artist’s work that is not conventionally understood as art. Critic Eugen Blume has examined the blurring of roles that Nauman plays in the video: On the one hand, it is a self-portrait of Nauman in his other life as a farmer. A cowboy decked out in the full regalia of his calling and equipped with all the necessary tool sets a corner for one of those archetypical ranch fences used to prevent the horses or cows from straying too far afield. In the course of the action the functional matter-of-factness of this procedure is transposed into the non-functional form of an artwork, whose producer in turn presents himself in his second role as artist. (Blume 2010, p.95.) The second part of the work’s title, (Allegory and Metaphor) , might suggest that this work can be read metaphorically so that like the corner itself, the video captures a meeting of two places: Nauman’s roles as both artist and rancher. An allegorical reading, on the other hand, might suggest the work has a lesson of some kind to impart. As a student at the University of Wisconsin Nauman absorbed ideas from his professors about the moral potential of art and he has stated: ‘there is the particularly American idea about morality that has to do with the artist as workman. Many artists used to feel all right about making a living with their art because they identified with the working class.’ (Nauman in Simon 1987, p.322.) The act of ‘setting a good corner’ foregrounds Nauman’s role as labourer and the kind of moral imperative implied in having a strong work ethic and doing a job well. When he viewed a first cut of the video, Nauman’s neighbour, Bill Riggins, whose words appear at the end of the tape, said: ‘Boy, you’re going to get a lot of criticism on that because people have a lot of different ways of doing those things’ (quoted in ‘“Setting a Good Corner”: Bruce Nauman’, accessed 11 December 2013). For this reason Nauman decided to include comments from his neighbour on the tape in order to acknowledge his superior expertise, ‘about keeping your tools sharpened and not letting them lie on the ground, where they get hurt or get abused and dirty, and you can’t find them’, as Nauman has said. (Nauman in ‘“Setting a Good Corner”: Bruce Nauman’, accessed 11 December 2013.) In comparison with the firmly established locals, Nauman was relatively new to ranch work, having moved to Pecos, New Mexico, in 1979, where he built a studio on his property. Although it is rare for his work to reflect the specific environment of New Mexico, this particular film sheds light on the life the artist leads in the southwest and in the landscape he experiences every day. Indeed, the work’s outdoor setting is unusual in that the majority of Nauman’s video works are filmed inside the studio (see, for example, MAPPING THE STUDIO II with color shift, flip, flop, & flip/flop (Fat Chance John Cage) 2001, Tate T11893 ).

This is a large, three-colour lithograph . It depicts the upper bodies of two men, seen in profile, shaking hands. The men are clowns, although this is not obvious from their appearance. They are smiling, open-mouthed, at each other. The contours of their bodies are printed in red and blue parallel lines. The lines are uneven in thickness and density and disrupted by areas where colour has been blocked in with a thick utensil. Yellow has also been used for shading. There is more blue colour on the clown on the left, while the clown on the right appears more red and yellow. Behind each clown’s head is a diagram of a side view of a male groin with an erect and a flaccid penis. A curved line with arrows pointing up and down indicates movement of the penis from erect to flaccid and vice versa. The one on the left is drawn in blue, the one on the right in red, balancing the clown’s colours. The erect penises have been roughly blocked in using red. The movement up and down is echoed by the clowns’ forearms, each repeated in two positions. Their outstretched hands, symbolically shaking each other, are not visible as distinct entities because of the layers of repeated lines as well as splodges and drips of ink on the paper . Ink has also run down the page, resulting in vertical lines. Inside the outlines of the arms, the letters A and B (back-to-front because of printing process) enclose short vertical lines with arrows pointing up and down to emphasise the movement up and down. At the top of the page the handwritten words ‘hand pumps up + down/penis pumps up + down’ appear back to front in blue. The image was printed and published by Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles in an edition of fifty. This is number thirty-three in the edition. Untitled is one of a series of twelve prints titled Fingers and Holes which Nauman created in 1994 in collaboration with Gemini G.E.L.. It was made using plates for a print the artist had proofed at Gemini in 1985, but which had never been released. When Nauman visited Gemini in 1993 to resolve the seven etchings in the group of prints, the 1985 lithographic proofs were brought out for his consideration. As well as creating Untitled , by successively printing each of the three plates (yellow, then red, then blue) in brighter colours, he decided to use the plates individually. The red plate was printed alone in black to create another Untitled image. A further Untitled image was created using the blue plate in black with the addition of a centre element, a version of one of the seven Untitled etchings. The pair of hands depicted in this etching were used as a unit, repeated five times to form a circle, to create Untitled (Tate P77804 ), the series’ only monoprint . Speaking of the original (1985) lithograph in 1989, Nauman explained his interest in clowns: ‘I did an earlier clown print ... but it has never been released. The basic idea came from the clown videotapes I did ... Like the reference to a “mask”, the clown is another form of disguise ... The traditional role of a clown is to be either funny or threatening – their position or function is ambiguous, and I like that.’ (Quoted in Bruce Nauman: Fingers and Holes , p.6.) In 1985 clown imagery predominated in Nauman’s works on paper, in neon and in video. Big Welcome and Mean Clown Welcome (both Leo Castelli Gallery, New York) are neons depicting hands and penises moving up and down in dialogue with one another. In Big Welcome only body parts are represented. Mean Clown Welcome is a scenario between two clowns who alternately stand straight and bend forward, their huge gloved hands and outsize penises reaching out towards each other.