Please Pay Attention Please : Writings and Interviews

by Bruce Nauman; Janet Kraynak (Ed.)

• ISBN13: 9780262140829
• ISBN10: 0262140829
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-11-01
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

Since the 1960s, the artist Bruce Nauman has developed a highly complex and pluralistic oeuvre ranging from discrete sculpture, performance, film, video, and text-based works to elaborate multipart installations incorporating sound, video recording and monitors, and architectural structures. Nauman's work is often interpreted in terms of movements and mediums, including performance, postminimalism, process, and conceptual art, thereby emphasizing its apparent eclecticism. But what is often overlooked is that underlying these seemingly disparate artistic tendencies are conceptual continuities, one of which is an investigation of the nature of language. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Nauman has refrained from participating in the critical discourse surrounding his own work. He has given relatively few interviews over the course of his career and has little to do with the art press or critical establishment. Indeed, he granted Janet Kraynak and The MIT Press almost complete autonomy in the preparation of this volume. In contrast to Nauman?s reputation for silence, however, from the beginning of his career, the incorporation of language has been a central feature of his art. This collection takes as its starting point the seeming paradox of an artist of so few words who produces an art of so many words. Please Pay Attention Pleasecontains all of Nauman's major interviews from 1965 to 2001, as well as a comprehensive body of his writings, including instructions and proposal texts, dialogues transcribed from audio-video works, and prose texts written specifically for installation sculptures. Where relevant, the texts are accompanied by illustrations of the artworks for which they were composed. In the critical essay that serves as the book's introduction, the editor investigates Nauman's art in relation to the linguistic turn in art practices of the 1960s?-understanding language through the speech act--and its legacy in contemporary art.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments	p. ix
Bibliographic Note	p. xv
Bruce Nauman's Words	p. 1
Writings	p. 47
Codification, 1966	p. 49
Amplified Tree Piece, 1970, and Untitled, 1969	p. 50
Untitled, 1969	p. 51
Untitled, 1969	p. 52
Untitled, 1969	p. 53
Untitled, 1969	p. 55
Notes and Projects, 1970	p. 56
Microphone/Tree Piece, 1971	p. 61
Left or Standing, Standing or Left Standing, 1971	p. 62
Floating Room, 1972	p. 65
Double Doors -- Projection and Displacement, 1973	p. 66
Flayed Earth/Flayed Self (Skin/Sink), 1973	p. 67
Instructions for a Mental Exercise, 1974	p. 76
Cones Cojones, 1974	p. 78
Body Pressure, 1974	p. 83
The Consummate Mask of Rock, 1975	p. 86
False Silences, 1975/2000	p. 92
Good Boy Bad Boy, 1985	p. 94
Violent Incident, 1986	p. 96
Interviews	p. 99
The Way-Out West, Interviews with Four San Francisco Artists, 1967 (1966)	p. 101
Nauman Interview, 1970	p. 111
Interview with Bruce Nauman, 1971 (May, 1970)	p. 133
Bruce Nauman, January, 1972	p. 155
Bruce Nauman: The Center of Yourself, 1975	p. 173
Bruce Nauman Interviewed, 1979 (October 9, 1978)	p. 185
Interview with Bruce Nauman, May 27 and 30, 1980	p. 197
Bruce Nauman Interview, 1982	p. 297
Keep Taking It Apart: A Conversation with Bruce Nauman, 1986 (July 12, 1986)	p. 305
Breaking the Silence: An Interview with Bruce Nauman, 1988 (January, 1987)	p. 317
Talking with Bruce Nauman: An Interview, 1989 (July, 1977 September, 1980 May, 1982 and July, 1989)	p. 339
Ways of Seeing: An Interview with Bruce Nauman, 1995	p. 379
Bruce Nauman: Vices and Virtues: Interview, 2001	p. 385
Bruce Nauman Interview, 2001	p. 397
Index	p. 405
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