Nevertheless, the seriousness of the statements on the two signs should not be underestimated. In Bruce Nauman His Self Portrait as a Fountain (1966; original photograph destroyed, reissued 1970) showed the artist spouting a stream of water from his mouth. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. And above all, it demonstrates the self-honesty which is so central to the cogency of his entire oeuvre. Nauman was also aware that, as an artist, he had the freedom to decide on what he did. 29 Neal Benezra, Surveying Nauman, in: Simon 1994, p. 22. These notes clearly reflect Nauman’s proximity to the contemporary art of the day, with its widespread conceptual approach and theoretical writings commenting upon the procedure. Nauman plays here with reversals, with the switch between inside and outside, front and back – just as he had already done in his sculptures – and in so doing heightens the disconcerting effect of the statement. 1941) Fish Fountain cast bronze and copper fountain: 49 1/2 in. The life-long earnestness with which Nauman has actively pursued this question – his “moral” stance – is a powerful argument for the validity of his art. As a test, Nauman hung the True Artist neon spiral in his front window for a while, on public display next to the beer sign. Self-Portrait as a Fountain is one of Bruce Nauman’s Photographic Suite of eleven photographs based on puns. The capital letters, 7 inches high, surround the inner rectangle in the style of an epitaph. A 30-second online art project: The theme appears for the first time in a 1966 colour photograph: under the title Self-Portrait as a Fountain, it shows a bare-chested Bruce Nauman with his hands raised as a bust spouting water. rais. Its existential significance is directly related to his motivation. in reviews of Rumi anthologies. For The True Artist is an Amazing Luminous Fountain (Window or Wall Shade), too, Nauman produced a drawing.45 It is an exact template for the typeface, the layout of the text and the spacing between the individual letters and words. Barks’s translations were only published as from the 1970s, however. (Nauman himself had already won an individual Golden Lion at the Biennale in 1999.) ibid. (19.1 x 20.3 x 5.7 cm); in: Simon 1994, cat. Its origin was from the Eternal. Do not be afraid. A similar image appears in Shelby Kennedy’s short film The Bruce Nauman Story (1968) – as an indirect reference, as it were, to the person of the artist whom the film is about. Glowing inside the building, and lending emphasis to the statement about the “true artist”, was the neon spiral The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (1967). Self-Portrait as a Fountain also pays homage to Marcel Duchamp‘s notorious Fountain (1917)—a readymade porcelain urinal that Duchamp provocatively exhibited as a sculpture. That left me alone in the studio; this in turn raised the fundamental question of what an artist does when left alone in the studio. (49.5 × 59.1 cm), Portfolio The idea of the artist as a fountain challenged Bruce Nauman and he was reluctant to let it go. In Self-Portrait as a Fountain, Nauman questions the traditional role of the artist. It set in motion, in Nauman’s oeuvre, a development which gave a first form to the literal addressing of the recipient, and which stands at the start of a wealth of written and spoken text-based works. They are often verbal puns, including palindromes such as Raw War8 – or confrontational “lists of human attributes and actions”.9 The early Window or Wall Shade delivers its message more discreetly than the colourful neon signs which succeed it, and also more poetically and enigmatically, but it serves Nauman’s intention to impact on the viewer’s consciousness with no less resolution. The interview took place on 9 October 1978 in Vancouver, on the occasion of a Nauman show at Ace Gallery. The artist’s freedom to do whatever he or she wants includes the necessity of making these fundamental decisions.” When Keziere observed to Nauman that these speculations on his role and behaviour as an artist were “not aesthetic but moral”, Nauman agreed that this was right.1. He has thereby set himself against a trend whose aim was to activate the recipient by giving them a participatory role in the form of the artwork. And what I was in fact doing was drinking coffee and pacing the floor. As if to test it, he illuminated it from all sides and thereby took it light-heartedly and seriously, literally and metaphorically. (132 x 99 cm). Whatever the case, for Nauman himself the luminous sign was an experience which fed into his following works using neon. In June 1966 Bruce Nauman completed his Master of Fine Arts at the University of California in Davis. For me it’s still a very strong thought.”35. rais. / Lettering should be relatively anonymous Roman – not Italic – some thick and thin and small serifs. Out of the practical necessity of shielding his studio from the sun’s glare and affording himself some privacy, coupled with the need to manifest himself as an artist, Nauman created a work with an unusual dual function: a semi-transparent Window or Wall Shade, with which he could protect himself from the direct gaze of passers-by and at the same time hang a message in the storefront window. For ideas often spring from a kind of illumination, and this latter cannot be induced. Much more than actually seeing inside the studio, it would have been reading the statement about the “true artist” that told passers-by what they were dealing with in this location. In contrast to the artist’s neon works, which could be easily manufactured in multiples, Nauman’s hand-lettered roller blind did not allow reproduction. 49, fig. rais. It reflects the coherence of his thinking and the astonishing openness of his approach. / The lettering should be black or silver and/or gold with blue or black shadow ground (as on a window) or some other color or combination of colors you might like.”46. 4, summer 1967. A look back over Nauman’s oeuvre as a whole shows to what extent this artist has taken the motivation for his art from his experience of human behaviour, as well as from a relentless interrogation of his own role in the context of what he has directly or indirectly experienced. It was not entirely clear to him, however, how he should proceed. Photo: Fabio Fabbrini, © Raussmüller. He depicts himself shirtless, with raised arms and open palms, spewing an … It seems as if, in this work, the blocking of the physical gaze at the same time wishes to encourage scrutiny at a more abstract level – something along the lines of: if you look more closely, you will see that the artist brings forth something astonishingly illuminating. The True Artist Is an Amazing Luminous Fountain is the first major piece in which Bruce Nauman worked with the medium of text. Photo: Jack Fulton, © Jack Fulton / 2018, ProLitteris, Zurich. (149.9 x 139.7 x 5.1 cm), edition of 3 + AP; in: Simon 1994, cat. It’s true and it’s not true at the same time. 13 The translations by Coleman Barks, in particular, led Rumi to become “the best-selling poet in the US”, according to Jane Ciabattari in the online article Why is Rumi the best-selling artist in the USA? The text of the spiral says what the true artist does, while the words on the blind tell us what he is. In the middle of this bar, Nauman has written the note “out on window side” and “in” on the reverse. Whatever the case, even the theory that artists might have the ability to spark insights that bring about change is itself a powerful motivation for action – at least for a young, not yet disillusioned artist. Your spirit is a fountain; river after river flow from it, put all mourning out of your mind forever and keep on drinking from the water. Nauman was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, but his father's work as an engineer for General Electric meant that the family moved often. 49 Raw Materials, 2004, sound installation (21 channels), display dimensions variable. The grocery store that Bruce Nauman rented in San Francisco’s Mission District, in order to use it as a studio, had large shop windows facing the street. 8 Raw War, 1970, neon tubing, 6 ½ x 17 ⅛ x 2 ½ in. 42 Jasper Johns, Shade, 1959; encaustic on canvas with objects; 52 x 39 in. Around the exterior of the building, the names of the seven Vices and Virtues (1983–1988) lit up intermittently in the form of large, superimposed neon words – like a pointer to the moral value of art. It is in this sense that the statements assume their most potent meaning and become, quite literally, political.”31 Against the backdrop of the 1960s, with its massive efforts to bring about social change, its nuclear armament as part of the Cold War and the USA’s traumatic involvement in the Vietnam War, it is indeed possible to read Nauman’s evocative statements as pointers towards impulses with whose aid a change of behaviour – and hence also of the state of affairs – might be wrought. 159, p. 237. During the period in which he made this work, Nauman used the statement “The true artist is an amazing luminous fountain” in a number of text-based works. Bruce Nauman has never ceased to examine the question of being an artist. rais. Nauman explored the idea of storage and conservation in a series of works. 92, p. 216. The possibility that Nauman was influenced by writings such as this is strengthened by another work, created shortly after the Mylar shade and likewise intended to proclaim a message about the “true artist” as a window or wall sign: a red and blue neon spiral in the style of an advertising logo with the text The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths.15 These “mystic truths” – relatively impenetrable in the shape of the neon sign – take on a certain meaning in conjunction with Rumi’s ode. 1. cat., Basel 1986, no. 34 Interview by Joe Raffaele, extract from the article The Way-Out West: Interviews with 4 San Francisco Artists by Joe Raffaele and Elizabeth Baker, in: ARTNews 66, no. From Davis Nauman moved to San Francisco, where he had been given a teaching contract and where he rented a former grocery store as a studio and an apartment. I think a lot of work is done that way, […] it’s the only way you find out is to do it.” And with regard to the two window signs: “Well, that was the examination, what is the function of an artist.

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