Bruce Nauman was born in 1941 in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Since the mid-1960’s he has created a far-ranging body of work that underlines his determination to describe the human condition in all its contradictions. His conceptual work stresses meaning over form and often uses irony and wordplay to raise issues about alienation. Like many of his peers in the 1960’s, Nauman was expanding artistic practice by introducing performance into his work, moving away from static objects to create an art of experience. The performance-based works offer investigations of our most basic physical emotions and psychological states.
Bruce Nauman is one of the most influential artists today and has set standards both in the diversity of his artistic means and the breadth of his concerns.
Bruce Nauman was born in 1941 in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He studied art, mathematics, and physics at the University of Wisconsin, and went on to study at the University of California at Davis, graduating with an MFA in 1966.
Nauman gave up painting in 1964 and began experimenting with sculpture and performance art and collaborated on film projects. Since the mid-1960’s he has created a body of work that includes sculptures, films, holograms, interactive environments, neon wall reliefs, photographs, prints, sculptures, videotapes, and performance. This far-ranging activity has meant that in the conventional sense Nauman has no single style, but his work does have an unshakeable core, and this is his determination to describe the human condition in all its contradictions, and give substance and voice to the extremes of human nature from doubt, fear and anger, to tenderness, vulnerability and comedic absurdity. His conceptual work stresses meaning over form and often uses irony and wordplay to raise issues about the human condition and alienation. Like many of his peers in the 1960’s, Nauman was expanding artistic practice by introducing performance into his work, moving away from static objects to create an art of experience. His early formal treatment of the body evolved into an investigation of the self and of human experience.
Between 1966 and 1970 he made numerous films and videos that recorded his activities and daily routines in the studio - such as pacing or drinking coffee. Looped continuously, the works became a metaphor for the human condition, capturing a sense of life’s maddening yet humorous continuum. In 1969, Nauman’s work
Performance Corridor marked a transition between his works that feature the artist as performer and those that transformed the viewers into performers, while Nauman all the while manipulated the viewer’s actions and experience. The performance-based works offer investigations of our most basic physical emotions and psychological states. Using simple devices - corridors, platforms, spotlights, video monitors - Nauman is able to engage both himself and his audience in activities of self-reflection.
Nauman has also been concerned with common patterns and stereotypes in gestures and language to demonstrate the stress and pressures of an increasingly brutal society. Sculptural shapes, colored neon lights, moving pictures, room-sized video installations and monumental multiple projections, accompanied by the spoken word, sounds and music, are enlisted. The mirror that Nauman’s art holds up to civilization is not flattering. But when he shows terror, alienation and loneliness, he communicates profound empathy with the pain of all creatures.
Bruce Nauman is one of the most influential artists today and has set standards both in the diversity of his artistic means and the breadth of his concerns.
