#wittegenstein

Mircea Eliade

Wittegenstein

Julius Evola

Nietzsche

Edmund Husserl

Franz Bretano

Heidegger

Dugin

Tamarian: Odo as bedding

English: you’ll find your peace by offering peace to another

Bruce Nauman (b 1941) USA

The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (Window or Wall Sign)   (1967) neon tubing 149.9x139.7x5.1cm

A      theartstory.org      Much of Nauman's work reflects the disappearance of the old modernist belief in the ability of the artist to express his ideas clearly and powerfully. Art, for him, is a haphazard system of codes and signs, just like any other form of communication. Aside from informing his use of words, it has also encouraged him to use readymade objects - objects that, unlike paintings or traditional sculptures, already carry meanings and associations from their use in the world - and to make casts of objects ranging from the space underneath chairs to human body parts.

Speaking of high art in the materials of low culture and advertising, it sets up a clash that prompts us to question old assumptions about the purpose of art and artists. Might artists be ordinary salesmen, just like so many others?

Ludwig Wittgenstein's ideas about language have been an important influence on his work, shaping his interest in the way words succeed or fail in referring to objects in the world. The philosopher's outlook has also no doubt influenced the tone of some of Nauman's work, which sometimes has comic, absurdist touches, employing jokes and word play, and yet also touches on obsessive behavior and frustration.

B   Lucina Ward   nga.gov.au      

The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (Window or Wall Sign)    was made in the winter of 1966–67 at a time when Bruce Nauman had established his studio in a disused grocery store in San Francisco. The work was designed for a large shop window at the front of the studio, rather like the neon advertising signs that hung in the shopfronts nearby, although with quite a different message. Referring to the conception of Window or wall sign, Nauman stated:

I had the idea that I could make art that would kind of disappear—an art that was supposed to not quite look like art. In that case, you wouldn’t really notice it until you paid attention. Then, when you read it, you would have to think about it ... The most difficult thing about the whole piece for me was the statement. It was a kind of test—like when you say something out loud to see if you believe it.

Once written down, I could see that the statement, ‘The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths’ was on the one hand a totally silly idea and yet, on the other hand, I believed it. It’s true and it’s not true at the same time. It depends on how you interpret it and how seriously you take yourself. For me it’s still a very strong thought.

Nauman’s use of neon, a commercially-produced, non-art material associated with motels, bars or advertising, seems to counteract his lofty statement. The dualism of his ideas is enhanced by the colour, form and structure of the work. At a distance the red spiral reads as the number six while the dense, more elaborate blue lettering provides a counterpoint: the strength of the numeric graphic sign is thrown into relief by the twists, turns and rhythm of the cursive shapes. Moreover, the message and promise to reveal ‘mystic truths’ is likewise complemented by the spiral form, a symbol often interpreted as the notion of journey, growth and evolution. Indeed, Joan Simon has linked Nauman’s interest in solving or revealing ‘impossible’ problems to his training as a mathematician. Elsewhere, such as Eleven color photographs (1966–67) he composes images that undermine the idea of words as a means of communication, treating ‘linguistic fragments and material issues as interchangeable’.

The success of Nauman’s first New York exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery in early 1968 prompted Castelli to suggest that works by the artist using fluorescent tubing should be issued in small editions; Nauman authorised Window or Wall Sign to be produced in an edition of three. The idea that an artist should advertise or promote his ability to see beyond everyday matters, and then distribute ‘evidence’ of this faculty in the form of an elegantly scripted, coloured sign seems at once self-evident and wryly humorous. Nauman continued to work with text and neon, most intensely in the 1980s, and Window or Wall Sign remains one of his most enduring and influential works.

 C  Shaune Lakin     nga.gov.au     Bruce Nauman started using photography around 1966, in part following his experience that year of the work of the American-born Surrealist photographer Man Ray at the LA County Museum of Art. Eleven color photographs 1966–67, released by New York gallerist Leo Castelli in 1970, brought wide critical and public attention and represented a radical rearticulation of photography as an ‘artistic’ medium and a source of meaning. It is one of the first instances of an artist engaging with the opportunities offered by colour photography, which until the early 1970s remained the province of commercial and snapshot photography.

Taking the appearance of documentary photographs, the works depict either an action or an ephemeral ‘sculpture’ created by Nauman in his studio, each involving a pun or word game. Nauman has said of the photographs:

I suppose I might have made them as paintings if I had been able to make paintings at the time … Perhaps if I had been a good enough painter I could have made realistic paintings. I don’t know, it just seemed easier to make the works as photographs.