Artists - Part 18

Bruce Nauman

Bruce Nauman, born in 1941, is an American artist now living in New Mexico.  After studying mathematics and physics at the University of Wisconsin, he got a Master of Fine Arts at the University of California, Davis in 1966 and became an artist.  After graduating, he realized that "If I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art. At this point art became more of an activity and less of a product."

Above is Self-Portrait as a Fountain, 1966.

The Metropolitan Museum's description of Nauman says:

For more than 50 years, he has worked in every conceivable artistic medium ... 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."

In the 1980s, Nauman produced a series of works made out of neon tubes, where different segments turned on and off over time to simulate movement like old-style neon advertising signs.  Above is Marching Man, 1985.  Although Nauman is not gay, these neon works often included homoerotic elements like the penis above.

This is Sex and Death or Double 69, 1985.  The sexuality here is ambiguous, as some of the figures seem to have breasts as well as penises.  Or maybe they switch back and forth from male to female as the different lights come on.

In Welcome, 1985, the two figures are shaking hands, a seemingly innocent activity, except that they're both sporting erections.

And this piece pares down the focus to two guys facing off and getting erect.

This work reminds us of the children's game Hangman, where a stick figure of a hanged man is drawn as a player fails to guess correctly.  Only in Nauman's version, the stick figure has a penis, and when he's hanged he gets an erection (a reflex action that actually happens to hanged males).

Seven Figures, 1985, shows seven people having sex with each other.  A couple of them may be female, but most of them are male.

The neon animation in Seven Figures is crude, but it makes it clear who's doing what.

Earlier, in the 1960s, in his "anything I do must be art" phase, Nauman made films of himself.  Most showed things like him walking around a room (clothed), not exactly riveting fare.

The film Black Balls, 1969, showed a closeup view of Nauman smearing black paint on his balls.  It was shot with a high-speed movie camera, so the result is in slow motion.  Above is a clip from the beginning of the film, before the ball-blackening began.  I have sped up the clip by a factor of 8 and it still looks slow.  In the original film, this 7-second clip took a minute, and the whole film moved glacially slowly for 8 minutes.

Is it art?  It is, by Nauman's definition that since he's an artist, anything that he does is art.

Another 1969 film was Bouncing Balls, showing Nauman bouncing his balls around with a finger.  I have not found a copy of the film anywhere, just a couple of screen shots to confirm that it's the same closeup view as Black Balls.  I'm guessing that it was also shot in excruciatingly slow motion.

The modern video above was called an "ironic tribute" to Nauman's film Bouncing Balls, featuring gay porn star Brad Rock's low hangers to a soundtrack of the slow movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto #21 (Nauman's films were silent).  This goes on for almost 8 minutes.  I've clipped it to just the beginning half-minute, because frankly, after a very short time you get the idea.

I should stress that this video has almost nothing in common with Nauman's work, other than the subject matter involving someone's balls moving around.  Is it art?  I guess it is, if the maker of the video says it is.