After researching the work of Bruce Nauman I have identified several links which might relate and prove worthy of investigation.
These include Nauman's links to Irish existentialist playwright Samuel Beckett's works; for example Nauman credits Beckett in his performance film Slow Angle Walk (Beckett Walk) from 1968. A consideration of John Cleese's performance from Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks which aired in 1970, might be interesting, as might another piece of work with a title taken from Beckett - Miroslaw Balka's powerful piece How it is, which was an installation for the Unilever Series in the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern in 2009.
Thursday, 10 October 2013
Thursday, 3 October 2013
Bruce Nauman- 'Walking around in an Exaggerated Manner around the Perimeter of a Square'.
I saw
Nauman’s Walking in an Exaggerated Manner
Around the Perimeter of a Square at the Walk
On exhibition at Sunderland’s
Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art on the 26th August 2013.
Without
knowing anything of Nauman's incredible legacy from the 1960’s I
was, at first un-impressed with his work. Even in 2013,
I was seeing his work as frustratingly un-artistic as I didn’t
understand why he was doing what he was doing, what it could mean, or even what he was
trying to prove!
After undertaking some research I have come to realise that for his time Nauman was ground breaking!
He pushed the boundaries of what art was and what art could be at a time of great change in the American art scene including the dematerialization of the art 'object'. Nauman, a forerunner of experimental film, used his own body as an expressive instrument.
The film is
black and white and nine minutes long. The quality of the film reflects the time of its making and the kind of equipment that despite being very basic compared to todays digital technology, afforded artists the opportunity to experiment with film in practices like Nauman's. The film has the grainy, crackly quality that we associate with 1960s art making.
The
perimeter of the square that Nauman walks around is marked off with
tape and there is a tilted mirror on the viewers left against the wall of the
studio. Nauman explained the mirrors purpose as exposing
that which might otherwise be concealed from the viewer.
Nauman walks
in a precise slow manner exaggerating his hips when moving from heel to toe,
this gives the piece a certain beauty as the precise movement
and balletic gestures are mesmerizing.
The subject
of Nauman’s work is often process, and this piece is no exception. He is famously
quoted as saying: 'If
I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the
studio must be art.’Bruce Nauman in
conversation with Ian Wallace and Russell Keziere, Vanguard, Vol. 8 #1, 1979
Further Info quoted from:
"After
graduating from UC Davis in 1966, Nauman set up a studio in a former grocery
shop in the Mission district of San Francisco and then in a sublet from his
university tutor in Mill Valley. These two locations provided the setting for a
series of performed actions which he captured in real time, on a fixed camera,
over the 10 minute duration of a 16mm film reel. The works continued Nauman’s
interest in a philosophical and honest approach to art, where the camera
becomes a sketch book, instantly recording an activity and the on-going process
of it.
Each
film is titled in accordance with the activity taking place such as Bouncing two balls between the floor and ceiling with changing rhythms or Playing a note
on the Violin while I walk around the studio. While the influence of music,
avant-garde dance and literature is apparent in these works, they appear
ambiguous and open-ended despite their reliance on a precise and
structured procedure. This is particularly evident in the work entitled Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square. In
this film, Nauman creates his own syntax of bodily movement by carefully
stepping around the edges of a double perimeter from heel to toe and swinging
his hips from side to side, resembling the Walk With Contraposto that he filmed
later in 1968.
In the late 1960s,
Nauman moved to New York and obtained a portable video camera from his dealer,
Leo Castelli. A pioneering piece of technical equipment at the time but one
that allowed Nauman to record for longer (60 minutes) and to immediately review
what he had filmed. The increased duration of the film meant that Nauman could
test his endurance to exhaustion point, particularly in Stamping in the Studio
where the artist is noticeably fatigued towards the end. In Pacing Upside Down
or Revolving Upside Down Nauman disorientates the viewer by inverting the image
and either pacing or performing a series of balletic moves that seem, once
inverted, to counteract gravity. By tipping the camera on its side, Nauman
appears to be walking up the wall in Slow Angle Walk (Beckett Walk) in homage
to the misadventures of Samuel Beckett’s characters Molloy and Watt. Many of
these films evolved from earlier performances, for instance in Wall-Floor
Positions Nauman recreated a sequence of seven postures in four varying stances
tightly framed against the floor and wall of the studio. As with all of
Nauman’s films, these laborious and repetitive actions are heightened by their
sound which audibly continues even when the artist stops the action and walks
off-screen.
Nauman is a
conceptual artist who works in any medium. He relentlessly questioned the human
condition within his experimental films."
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