Bruce Nauman

A Rose Has No Teeth (1966) - Lead, 7.5 x 8 x 2.25 in.

Eleven Color Photographs (1966-1967/1970) - Portfolio of eleven color photographs, various sizes, all approx. 19.75 x 23 in. edition of 8 Published by Leo Castelli Gallery, New York

Art Make-Up (1967) - video in which Nauman slowly covers his face and upper torso with white, then pink, then green, then black makeup, until by the end he looks like a negative image Initially the films were intended to be projected simultaneously on four walls of a room. Although this form of installation was never realized for this piece, Nauman employed the method for subsequent film and video installations.^[9]

[1]

The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (1967) – a spiraling neon sign with this slogan.

[10]

Flesh to White to Black to Flesh (1968) 51 minutes b&w, sound. Nauman puts on white makeup, then black makeup, then returns to his ordinary skin color.^[12]

[11]

Burning Small Fires (1969) - for which Nauman burned Ed Ruscha's book Various Small Fires and Milk (1964), photographed it, and edited a book of his own.^[13]

artist's book

Wall-Floor Positions (1969) - Videotape, black and white, sound, 60 mins. to be repeated continuously.

Pacing Upside Down(1969) 60 minutes b&w. With his arms held over his head, hands crossed, Nauman is moving jerkily around a perimeter defined by a square drawn on the studio floor, filmed by a fixed camera, placed upside down.^[14]

[11]

Audio Video Piece for London, Ontario (1969–70) - Nauman uses a closed-circuit television, a camera, and an audio recording to confuse sensory perception as the television broadcasts images and rhythmic noises of an adjoining room.

[15]

LA AIR (1970) – A soft-cover artist's book, featuring only 10 color illustrations [photographs] of the polluted Los Angeles skyline. It complements and extends the sky-blue pages of Nauman's earlier book CLEA RSKY (1968–69).^[17] No text.

[16]

Henry Moore bound to fail, back view (1967–1970) – cast wax relief of a man's back with arms tied by ropes.^[19] In 2001, this work sold for $9 million at auction. This is one of the highest prices paid for Nauman's work.

[18]

Please/Pay/Attention/Please (1973) - Collage and letraset, 27.5 x 27.5 in.

Elke allowing the floor to rise up over her face(1973) 39 minutes color sound. She lies on her back, turns over, moves around as the video makes her seem to sink below the floor.^[20]

[11]

Tony Sinking into the Floor, Face Up, and Face Down(1973) 60 minutes. Tony lies there as if dead, then slowly wakes up, as the editing makes him seem to sink into the floor.^[21]

[11]

Good Boy Bad Boy (1985) - Two video monitors, two videotape players, two videotapes (color, sound). dimensions variable.

Clown Torture (1987) – in four separate stacked video screens, a clown screaming "No" repeatedly, a clown telling an annoying children's joke, a clown balancing goldfish bowls, and a clown sitting on a public toilet.

[22]

Vices and Virtues (1988) – Atop the Charles Lee Powell Structural Systems Laboratory on the campus of the University of California, San Diego as part of the Stuart Collection of public art: neon signs seven feet tall, alternating the seven vices and seven virtues: FAITH/LUST, HOPE/ENVY, CHARITY/SLOTH, PRUDENCE/PRIDE, JUSTICE/AVARICE, TEMPERANCE/GLUTTONY, and FORTITUDE/ANGER.^[24]

[23]

Learned Helplessness in Rats (Rock and Roll Drummer) (1988) – Plexiglass maze, closed circuit video camera, video projector, two videotape players, two monitors, and two videotapes. Collection of MOMA.

[25]

Animal Pyramid (1989) – a stack of seventeen taxidermy molds rising to twelve feet

[15]

World Peace (1996) – five projectors or video players displaying four women and a man each speaking simultaneous monologues about world peace and endlessly rehearsing the words 'We'll talk – They'll listen / You'll talk – We'll listen / They'll talk – You'll listen'.^[27]

[26]

Stadium Piece (1998–99) – outdoor M-shaped staircase, part of the

Western Washington University Public Sculpture Collection

Setting a Good Corner (Allegory & Metaphor) (1999) – looping video of the artist setting a corner fencepost.

[28]

Mapping the Studio I (Fat Chance John Cage) (2001) – multiple projections record nocturnal activity by the artist's cat and various mice in his studio over the summer of 2000.

[29]

Raw Materials (2004) – sound installation displayed in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern,^[31] bringing together 21 audio pieces made over a period of 40 years.^[32]

[30]

One Hundred Fish Fountain (2005) comprises hollow bronze fish, cast from catfish, bass, whitefish and other species, suspended by wires from the ceiling at different heights, as if swimming in deep water. Below them is a broad, shallow basin, cobbled together from rubber sheeting, which measures 25 feet by 28 feet, from which water is pumped up to each fish through a hose connected to its belly. The environmentally scaled sculpture all but fills the room, allowing just a narrow track for the viewer to edge around the perimeter, in much the same way as Nauman's early corridor works first invited then restricted movement.^[34]

[33]

Untitled "Leave the Land Alone" (1969/2009) – premiered as a public skywriting project over Pasadena for the Armory Center for the Arts in September 2009, initiated by curator Andrew Berardini. The plane circled around and rewrote the brief sentence "Leave the Land Alone" several times. This work connects with LAAIR as well as lambastes the land art movement^[36]

[35]

Days/Giorni (2009) – two rows of wafer-thin white speakers that played 14 recordings of seven people chanting the days of the week, either in English (“Days”) or Italian (“Giorni”).^[38] Purchased in a 50–50 deal by the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Maja Oeri, a MoMA trustee whose Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation is at the Schaulager in Basel, Switzerland.^[39]

[37]

For Beginners (all the combinations of the thumb and fingers) (2010) – video depicting Nauman's hands enacting all the possible combinations of the four fingers and thumb – 31 positions in all – accompanied by his verbal enumeration of each finger combination. Purchased in a 50–50 deal by François Pinault and LACMA.^[39]

[40]

For Beginners (instructed piano) (2010) - sound piece featuring a tentative piano solo by the artist-musician .^[41]

Terry Allen

1993 - for his distinguished work as a sculptor and his extraordinary contribution to twentieth-century art

Wolf Prize

1994 - the Wexner Prize

[49]

1999 - Golden Lion of the .^[50]

Venice Biennale

2004 - for sculpture^[51]

Praemium Imperiale

2008 - United States (ECA) announced the selection of Bruce Nauman as the American representative to the 2009 Venice Biennale where he won the prestigious Golden Lion.^[52]

Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs

2014 - ^[53][54]

Austrian Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts

HC Westermann

Samuel Beckett

- Throughout Nauman's long career, to a greater or lesser extent, Nauman has credited Wittgenstein as an influence of his work. He has spoken of this influence in several interviews. In a 1970 interview Nauman speaks to the broader sense of Wittgenstein's influence: “Just the way Wittgenstein proceeds in thinking about things, his awareness of how to think about things. I don't think you can point to any specific piece that's the result of reading Wittgenstein, but it has to do with some sort of process of how to go about thinking about things.” This sentiment was also stated in a 1980 article. Nauman makes these statements even though he has pointed to a piece that was directly influenced, in a 1966 interview where Nauman speaks about the piece “A rose has no teeth”, the title of which was a direct quote from one of Wittgenstein's "language games". This relationship is something that art writers have continued to see in his work throughout his career, especially in his linguistic works, whether written or spoken. Arthur C. Danto speaks of Nauman's work and his relationship to Wittgenstein in an article written in 1995: “A great deal of the work of Bruce Nauman consists in issuing commands ... it is perhaps helpful to consider those works as having at times the framework and logic of language games — which means, since the works are often directed at us, that we are meant to do something in response ... designed as language games, they address us less as viewers than participants. To experience a Nauman is to interact with it in some way that goes beyond appreciating it as a work of art." In a similar line of thinking, Janet Kraynak in the book "Please pay attention please" makes a case that a set of works has a similar effect, by the fact that all the pieces "Contain Directive or imperative verbs, calling out 'You'", bringing the viewer into this language game that Nauman is setting up.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

John Cage

Philip Glass

La Monte Young

Meredith Monk

from PBS series Art:21 - Art in the 21st Century - Season 1 (2001)

Biography, interviews, essays, artwork images and video clips

2004 interview from frieze

Setting a Good Corner, an interview, PBS, Art:21

Archived 2008-02-13 at the Wayback Machine

Bruce Nauman in artfacts

Sperone Westwater Gallery

Bruce Nauman in the National Gallery of Australia's Kenneth Tyler collection