Second Poem Piece

Bruce NaumanWW-1969-121717

1969·Steel·152.4 × 152.4 cm (60 × 60 in.)

Bruce Nauman’s engagement with linguistic gamesmanship— wordplay, puns, and jokes—can be traced to two exceptional steel sculptures inscribed with text produced in the late 1960s. In one of these, Second Poem Piece, Nauman positioned the words YOU, MAY, NOT, WANT, TO, SCREW, and HERE (or HEAR) strategically across the sculpture’s flat surface, each word establishing its own vertical column. As the text is read horizontally, row by row, the progressive removal of one or more words from the topmost sentence produces an insistently non-narrative list of variations—even a kind of “poem.” The artist has said of this work, “What I was interested in was that art generally adds information to a situation, and it seems reasonable to also be able to remove information from a situation and get art from that.” Here, the permanence of inscribed steel is at odds with the shifting meanings of the sculpture's series of statements.

Catalogue

Year: 1969
Medium: Steel
Dimensions: 152.4 × 152.4 cm (60 × 60 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Bruce Nauman

Artist

Bruce Nauman

Sculpture

Bruce Nauman is widely regarded as one of the most influential American artists living today. The artist’s radically experimental works defy easy categorization, blending the styles and approaches of Conceptual Art, Performance art, Minimalism and video art. His heterogeneous and thought-provoking oeuvre showcases Nauman’s analytical deconstruction of aesthetic and physical experience through novel engagements with language and the body. Often imbued with satirical and socio-political undertones, his confrontational artworks draw upon various formal strategies, from clever word play to large-scale sculptural arrangements, which disorient viewers’ bodies and perceptual assumptions.

Fort Wayne, United States

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