TIME Magazine: TIME 100: Bruce Nauman


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Bruce Nauman

Artists & Entertainers
	Mark Burnett Frank Gehry John Galliano Peter Jackson Nicholas Hytner Simon Cowell OutKast Norah Jones Jerry Bruckheimer J.K. Rowling Ken Kutaragi Bruce Nauman Katie Couric Charlie Kaufman Hideo Nakata Aishwarya Rai Ferran Adrià Nicole Kidman Sean Penn Guy Laliberté
	Leaders & Revolutionaries Builders & Titans Scientists & Thinkers Heroes & Icons Introduction Essay FROM THE ARCHIVE: Artists & Entertainers from 1900-1999

Artist Behind the Enigmas

By RICHARD LACAYO

DAVID ZALUBOWSKI/AP

FROM THE TIME ARCHIVE

	Being a Nuisance His work is deliberately off-putting, but Bruce Nauman has become the most influential American artist of his generation [4/24/1995]

"The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths." Some years ago Bruce Nauman spelled out those words in a now famous electric wall piece. An exalted statement in burger-bar neon. Did he mean it? To this day we don't know. But if there is something about contemporary art that you find baffling or unnerving or belligerent, chances are Nauman is somewhere behind it.

Years before Damien Hirst submerged a sliced shark in formaldehyde, Nauman made his own comment on flesh and death called Carousel: four metal arms swing in a circle like a ceiling fan, with a faux animal carcass hanging from each and dragging hellishly along the floor. As for those neon wall pieces, every artist working in painted or electronic words—there are lots of them—owes something to Nauman. And when the celebrated British artist Rachel Whiteread is done casting entire empty rooms in plaster, she can return the idea to Nauman, who long ago cast the empty space beneath a chair. "When I was in art school, I thought art was something I would learn how to do, and then I would just do it," says Nauman, 63. "At a certain point I realized that it wasn't gonna work like that. Basically, I would have to start over every day and figure out what art was gonna be." And whatever he figures it is, that's what it is.

May 26, 1980	July 8, 1998	Oct. 13, 1967

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