{"id":760,"date":"2026-06-29T15:36:48","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T15:36:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=760"},"modified":"2026-06-29T15:36:48","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T15:36:48","slug":"bruce-nauman-isnt-bound-by-the-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=760","title":{"rendered":"Bruce Nauman Isn\u2019t Bound by the Rules"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bruce Nauman, the artist, was sitting at the front desk of Okey Dokey Konrad Fischer, a gallery in Tribeca, one recent Saturday morning. He was wearing a plaid shirt, jeans, and a cowboy hat; a cane was propped between his legs. Next to him was a friend of his, the painter Eric Fischl. Nauman\u2019s short-run show \u201cNo Mistakes\u201d had just opened, but the two weren\u2019t discussing art. They were talking about hair loss.<\/p>\n

Read more Herding the Fro-Yo Sheep<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cSo the issue is, do you shave it?\u201d Fischl, who has gracefully maintained an impressive thatch of thinning gray hair, asked. \u201cA comb-over is not an option. I tend to only look at myself in the front, because if I see it from the back I go, \u2018What the heck is going on back there?\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Nauman, who is eighty-four, keeps what remains on his head at a close crop. He has cycled through a few styles over the decades. The shaved-head period. The beard period\u2014\u201calso known as the grow-your-hair-somewhere-else-on-your-head phase,\u201d Fischl said.<\/p>\n

The topic had come up because the back of Nauman\u2019s head featured prominently in \u201cNo Mistakes,\u201d a series of 3-D videos that capture, in slow motion, Nauman drawing with his eyes closed. The idea arose after Fischl asked Nauman how, exactly, he held a pencil.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hadn\u2019t really thought about it,\u201d Nauman said. One day, he asked his daughter, Zo\u00eb, to film over his shoulder while he sketched. The exercise forced him to question not only how he drew but how he worked.<\/p>\n

Nauman got up and slowly walked to the back of the gallery, where the videos were playing on two screens. He is reserved and mumbly, qualities that give him a quiet charm. The name of his show was inspired by an exercise that he learned from the German curator Kasper K\u00f6nig: draw a pig without lifting your pencil. It was tricky. But Nauman found that, when he tried the exercise with his eyes closed, he was no longer bound by the same rules. Freed from creating a realistic-looking pig, he couldn\u2019t make any mistakes.<\/p>\n

In the gallery, he put on a pair of 3-D glasses and watched a film of himself, with a stylus in each hand, drawing a cup. Onscreen, his hands floated slowly across a sheet of paper, an entranced expression on his face.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Nauman\u2019s team had arrived. In New York, he puts them up at the Bowery Hotel. \u201cIt\u2019s close to the action,\u201d Juliet Myers, his longtime studio manager, said. Nauman owns a town house in the East Village, but for almost fifty years he\u2019s lived mostly on a seven-hundred-acre property in Galisteo, New Mexico, outside Santa Fe, where he and his late wife, the painter Susan Rothenberg, worked in separate studios. Since her death, in 2020, he\u2019s been travelling more. \u201cHe used to not want to go anywhere,\u201d Myers said. \u201cWhy leave the ranch?\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Postscript: Mark Singer<\/a><\/p>\n

Nauman\u2019s studio assistant, Ellen Babcock, a gentle professorial type, came over. They had been working on \u201cNo Mistakes\u201d for more than a year. \u201cWe typically film for a few hours,\u201dBabcock explained. \u201cThen we break for lunch\u2014he usually cooks something. Then we work some more. We get along because neither of us talk much.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFood is sometimes more interesting to the boss than art,\u201d Benjamin Kidwell Lein, a bespectacled technician who helps Nauman with video postproduction, said. \u201cFirst one up makes the coffee. He feeds me his green-chile stew, which is awesome.\u201d In the evenings, the two watch movies together, usually Japanese films, although Nauman recently enjoyed a documentary about the Lumi\u00e8re brothers. He tends to leave the projectors he uses for the video project running overnight, which drives Lein nuts. \u201cThey have a life span,\u201d Lein said. \u201cHe always says to me, \u2018Ah, Benjamin, I just leave it on for the cats.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n

The gallery was beginning to fill with friends. Nauman had hauled his own ratty cream-colored sofa and a few chairs from his house into the space.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 3-D makes me nauseous,\u201d the artist Rachel Harrison said.<\/p>\n

Steve McQueen, the filmmaker, came by. \u201cMaestro, how you doing?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

Nauman\u2019s gallerist, Berta Fischer, was hosting the crowd later at the restaurant Altro Paradiso. A car was coming for Nauman, and he headed toward the door. Outside stood the painter Frank Owen, a friend since their days as art students at the University of California, Davis, in the nineteen-sixties.<\/p>\n

Owen grinned at Nauman: \u201cI recognize you!\u201d Then he jumped in the air.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan\u2019t do that with my legs anymore,\u201d Nauman said. The two batted their canes like swords.<\/p>\n

Owen had travelled from upstate, and talked about Nauman visiting him. There\u2019s a pond near his house which is perfect for skipping stones. When Nauman was there, they couldn\u2019t find any good rocks. The next time Nauman showed up, Owen said, \u201che was carrying a bag with him on the plane. You could hear the stones jangling as he walked. California granite. If the pond ever drains, that\u2019s all they\u2019ll find.\u201d\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n

Read more Something Is Very Wrong with Modern Longevity Science<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At a gallery in Tribeca, the artist talked bald spots with Eric Fischl and walked through his quickie exhibition \u201cNo Mistakes,\u201d 3-D videos of him drawing with his eyes closed. Thessaly La Force reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":759,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[103],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ways-of-seeing"],"yoast_head":"\nBruce Nauman Isn\u2019t Bound by the Rules - City Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=760\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bruce Nauman Isn\u2019t Bound by the Rules - City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"At a gallery in Tribeca, the artist talked bald spots with Eric Fischl and walked through his quickie exhibition \u201cNo Mistakes,\u201d 3-D videos of him drawing with his eyes closed. 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