Bruce Nauman
Biography: Bruce Nauman 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.
Place of Birth: Not available
Birthday: December 06, 1941
Deathday: N/A
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Known For
Contrapposto Studies, I through VII
2015-01-01
Contrapposto Studies, I through VII
Overview: This exhibition presents a new work by Bruce Nauman, Contrapposto Studies, I through VII, which continues the artist's exploration of video, sound, and performance. Characteristic of his work over the last five decades, Nauman transforms a simple and subtle gesture into a complex network of images and sound.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2015-01-01
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Slow Angle Walk (Beckett Walk)
1968-01-01
Slow Angle Walk (Beckett Walk)
Overview: A fixed camera turned on its side records Nauman repeating for nearly an hour a laborious sequence of body movements inspired by passages in works by Samuel Beckett that describe similarly repetitive and meaningless activities. Hands clasped behind his back, he kicks one leg up at a right angle to his body, pivots forty-five degrees, falls forward hard with a thumping noise, extends the rear leg again at a right angle behind, and begins the sequence again. As in many of his fixed-camera film and video works, parts of Nauman's body disappear from the frame as he moves close to the camera; occasionally, he walks off-screen completely while the sound of his footsteps continues on the sound tracks.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1968-01-01
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For Beginners (all the combinations of the thumb and finger)
2010-01-01
For Beginners (all the combinations of the thumb and finger)
Overview: HD video installation (color, stereo sound), continuous play, two HD video sources, two HD video projectors, four speakers
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2010-01-01
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Art Make-Up
Art Make-Up
Overview: Art Make-Up is composed of four individual segments, each 10 minutes long. In them, Nauman appears tightly framed by the camera against a blank background, shirtless, and visible from the torso up. The action begins. Dipping his fingers into a small dish of makeup, he smears his face and body with the thick pigment until he is entirely covered. As the work’s title indicates, he begins with white makeup. He then moves on to pink, green, and, finally, black, layering each color on top of the previous ones.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
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Walk with Contrapposto
1968-01-01
Walk with Contrapposto
Overview: "In this videotape Nauman attempted to maintain the contrapposto pose associated with classical and Renaissance sculpture while walking down a long, narrow corridor of his own design. In this position, one knee is bent, and weight is shifted to the opposing hip. Trying to walk while holding the pose of Donatello's David is absurd and comical, but there is also a menacing discomfort to Walk with Contrapposto. With both hands behind his head, Nauman resembles a prisoner; the video camera positioned high above him might be a surveillance device. He elected to show the corridor without the video at the Whitney Museum in New York in 1969, inviting viewers to traverse it. Nauman removed himself from the piece yet maintained a claustrophobic sense of control: "It's another way of limiting the situation so that someone else can be a performer, but he can do only what I want him to do," he said."
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1968-01-01
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Setting a Good Corner (Allegory & Metaphor)
2000-01-01
Setting a Good Corner (Allegory & Metaphor)
Overview: The artist Bruce Nauman set the corner post of a fence on his ranch in Galisteo, New Mexico, one day and videotaped the process. As the title of Setting a Good Corner (Allegory & Metaphor) suggests, Nauman sees this simple, even mundane, activity as an allegory and metaphor for other areas of life. Maybe we are to see the work as a metaphor for making a work of art, since Nauman has chosen to film it for display in a museum. One of the key elements of the video is Nauman’s decision to show us the entire process. He does not leave out the long digging scenes or edit the piece down to its most essential components.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2000-01-01
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Playing a Note on the Violin While I Walk Around in the Studio
1968-01-01
Playing a Note on the Violin While I Walk Around in the Studio
Overview: In this film record of a studio activity, Nauman set himself the task of walking while playing "two notes [on a violin] very close together so that you could hear the beats in the harmonics." The camera is set centrally in the studio in a stationary position so that when he walks outside of the camera's view at times, only the sounds of the notes and footsteps are heard. Sound and image are out of sync, a situation noticeable only at the end of the film when the sound stops but Nauman continues to pace and play. [Overview Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix]
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1968-01-01
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Stamping in the Studio
1968-01-01
Stamping in the Studio
Overview: From an inverted position, high above the floor, the camera records Nauman’s trek back and forth and across the studio; his stamping creates a generative rhythm reminiscent of native drum beats or primitive dance rituals. However, Nauman is not participating in a social rite or communal ritual—he is completely individualized. Isolated in his studio, his actions have no apparent reason or cause beyond his aesthetic practice.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1968-01-01
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Washing Hands Normal
1996-02-10
Washing Hands Normal
Overview: This stacked two-screen video installation shows the artist washing his hands with a vigour that goes beyond a daily cleaning ritual. The energy of the gesture and the distortive effect of the double screen evoke a sinister prior event and a sense panic or fear. Here Nauman continues his ongoing investigation into human psychology and feelings of discomfort. The sense of anxiety is heightened by the echoing sound of the water draining away for the fifty-five-minute duration of the double footage.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1996-02-10
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No, No
1987-08-06
No, No
Overview: “Two color monitors placed in the window played one of Nauman’s most recent videos, that of a clown jumping up and down shouting ‘No, No, No, No!’ endlessly. Nauman’s videos confront the viewer with behavior normally thought unacceptable. The clown’s simple declarative statement takes on new meaning and creates tension and anxiety for the viewer.” The New Museum Annual Report, 1988
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1987-08-06
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Washing Hands Abnormal
1996-02-01
Washing Hands Abnormal
Overview: In this work, shown on two stacked monitors, Bruce Nauman washes his hands with a thoroughness bordering on obsession. Each from a different vantage point, the two monitors present a simple everyday action, extended to fill almost an hour. The work is a self-portrait in which the hands serve as a metaphor for the artist’s creative potency. The camera’s unorthodox angle, the image’s shifting colors and the repetitive movement unite in giving this commonplace act an hypnotic effect. Bruce Nauman is particularly renowned for his video performances of the 1970s in which his body is the focus of improvised, repetitive acts. The works produced in the ‘90s refer back to the strategy he pursed in his earlier career.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1996-02-01
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Bouncing Balls
1969-01-02
Bouncing Balls
Overview: In this film, Nauman bounces his testicles with one hand. Shot in extreme close-up, the work is perhaps an ironic reference to an earlier film Bouncing Two Balls Between the Floor and Ceiling with Changing Rhythms, in which he bounced rubber balls. Along with Black Balls, Gauze, and Pulling Mouth, Bouncing Balls is one of Nauman's "Slo-Mo" films which are shot with an industrial high speed camera.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1969-01-02
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Violin Tuned D.E.A.D
1969-09-01
Violin Tuned D.E.A.D
Overview: In an earlier film, Playing A Note on the Violin While I Walk Around the Studio (Violin #1), Nauman played a single note on the violin as he walked around his studio. In this video work, he remains in a stationary position while he plays four strings together. (These have been tuned to the notes of the title, as opposed to the normal G, D, A, and E.) The camera is fixed and turned on its side.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1969-09-01
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Violin Film #1 (Playing The Violin As Fast As I Can)
1968-07-16
Violin Film #1 (Playing The Violin As Fast As I Can)
Overview: Violin Film #1 (Playing the Violin as Fast as I Can), is one of several 1967-68 films featuring Nauman's violin-playing, in which the production of sound is subjected to procedural strategies that problematize its status as music and performance.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1968-07-16
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Flour Arrangements
1967-01-01
Flour Arrangements
Overview: Flour Arrangements, a photo series showing Bruce Nauman pushing some piles of flour around on the floor. He uses his body by treating it like material for his art. Nauman committed himself to making one ephemeral flour sculpture each day for over a month.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1967-01-01
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Black Balls
1969-01-01
Black Balls
Overview: In this film, Nauman applies black makeup to his testicles. The action was recorded with an industrial high-speed camera capable of shooting between one thousand and four thousand frames per second.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1969-01-01
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The Bruce Nauman Story
1968-01-01
The Bruce Nauman Story
Overview: Creative portrait of the artist Bruce Nauman.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1968-01-01
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Dance or Exercise on the Perimeter of a Square
1968-01-01
Dance or Exercise on the Perimeter of a Square
Overview: Bruce Nauman - Dance or Exercise on the Perimeter of a Square (Square Dance) (1968), 16mm black-and-white film For this film, Bruce Nauman made a square of masking tape on the studio floor, with each side marked at its halfway point. To the sound of a metronome and beginning at one corner, he methodically moves around the perimeter of the square, sometimes facing into its interior, sometimes out.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1968-01-01
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Walking in an Exaggerated Manner around the Perimeter of a Square
1968-01-01
Walking in an Exaggerated Manner around the Perimeter of a Square
Overview: In this silent film, Nauman walks around the perimeter of a large square marked off with masking tape. He shifts his hips exaggeratedly as he places one foot in front of the other, moving carefully around the square.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1968-01-01
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