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Bruce Nauman One Hundred Live and Die, 1984. Neon tubing with clear glass tubing on metal, 118 x 132 ¼ x 21 in. (299.7 x 335.9 x 53.3 cm), Collection Benesse House Museum, Naoshima (near Okayama in Japan)

Bruce Nauman's artwork strikes a deep cord in the hearts of the believers of traditional art makers. By learning the rules of art making set at his period of the art work and acknowledging the standards for artwork than intentional breaking those rules by doing the exact opposite, he is not devaluing other art, instead he is perpetuating the ideas that shifting our attention to something like his creative process can be refreshing and reviving. This is partly why his body of work is a spectacle. Unless you're a minimalist artist, art making is always labor intensive no matter the concept. Nauman's installations require less labor than the convention process of making a bornished painting or a polishes sculpture. Nauman's work can translate into days and painting and sculpture translate into months or years. If Bruce Nauman's statement is true, this raises the question "is one an artist if his work has never left the studio?" I believe so. Nauman's work is considered "art" because he is an "artist working in the studio," however, he is implying that one can only be considered an artist through that way, which is not true. An artist is simply a person who makes artwork. No matter if it is for sale or not.

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Bruce Nauman
American violence 1981/1982. Neon tubing with clear glass tubing suspension.
Private collection. Courtesy of la Biennale di Venezia.

I like this piece because it’s an interesting composition and fights the powers of American violence. The words he chose and the way he portrays the message makes it sound more personal violence from your spouse or parents. Something more personable and like his other neon tubing compositions, it looks fun and interesting but conveys a serious message.

Bruce naumans approach to art seems less labor intensive and more of a thought process. Carving a large stone for sculptures can be pretty labor intensive. And his work doesn’t seem labor intensive. It seems it has more of a thought process. Choosing the right colors. The right words to portray. How to portray a greater social message. It’s more daunting because he wants people to feel a certain message. How does one get one to feel the emotions they are trying to convey and it’s more abstract and the thought process is more intensive.

I don’t agree with the statement because of the way I work. I think it depends on a how a person thinks. If he’s always working in the studio, does that mean thought and art created when not in the studio not art? I think art is always about the process and the product. It would be foolish to think it was one or the other. Art can be created anywhere and just because you’re in your art studio doesn’t mean you’re doing work. It’s about the process and I think the process as an artist is always encompassing and can be involved anywhere you are with your mind.

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Bruce Nauman’s exhibition at the MoMA was extremely innovative. Nauman was an artist of constructed illusions to the mind. He experimented and tested boundaries that the human brain usually would not be exposed to. Based on the usage of math and science incorporated to understand and uncover during his creative process, his work ethic is in depth and labor intensive. In comparison to painting and/or sculpture making both creative processes require a level of thought and concentration. Nauman states that “If I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art. At this point art became more of an activity and less of a product.” I believe that art comes in all forms and it is merely subjective. Any object created by someone is considered a piece of art. Below I have attached his LED powered light fixture made up of a variety of miscellaneous phrases featuring death, life, and joy. As the lights turn on and off they switch at random, Nauman wanted to evoke an illusion to the viewers mind that the sequence of the phrases had a meaning when in fact they were random and un coincidental.

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Bruce Nauman

Kassel Corridor: Elliptical Space 1972

Painted wall board, wood, and door hardware.

Bruce Nauman’s process was not one that would be considered to be physically labor intensive. Instead Nauman focused on being able to display conceptual ideas into a physical space and worked out the logistics and materials to have all aspects properly display his ideas. I think that while Nauman’s work in a literal sense took less effort to achieve but manages to match or even surpass the complexity of traditional art in some ways. While I personally don’t agree with Nauman’s statement on what can be considered art, I think it is accurate from his own point of view. His perception of art is in response to his distance from traditional art and his own creations because his art work is a reflection of only one phase of the artistic process since he didn’t partake in the construction of his pieces. Nauman’s Kassel Corridor: Elliptical Space is not considered art solely because Bruce Nauman is an artist who created it in a studio but because it is representative of several ideas. The two rounded walls create a room that can occupy only one person and is locked inside by a key. Nauman planned it with the intention of the occupant doing whatever they wanted with the feeling of privacy in what is a public space, but in reality people are welcome to observe the individual without being able to soil their feeling of privacy because the door is locked. This concept reminds me of society today where true privacy and security is a false sense because of technology and other individuals.

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The one i picked is 'clown with video survellance'.1986 watercolor, pencil, and collage on paper.
Private collection.
The reason i picked this picture because i think the way he drew is creative. he put a woman sitting on the chair picture. and drew the same structure as the clown did. he think the woman is the clown i thought.
Bruce Nauman (born December 6, 1941) is an American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance.
i dont think the nauman style made him require more labor tho. i think this is a easier way for artitist to produce their own garment.
and i think he is a little bit too arrogant about what he said. the stuff he did is more try to make art looks like art i think. he is not really respect to others even though he drew pretty well

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Bruce Nauman

One Hundred Live and Die, 1984. Neon tubing with clear glass tubing on metal, 118 × 132 1/4 × 21 in. (299.7 × 335.9 × 53.3 cm), Collection Benesse Holdings, Inc. / Benesse House Museum, Naoshima (near Okayama in Japan)

I think Bruce Nauman thought deeply about materials and process of his artworks. His work doesn’t require a lot of labor than a conventional sculpture but I think he took more time before he start making his work than actual time of making it. It might be tricky to make algorithm to light the neon signs but I think the conventional sculpture is more labor consuming.

This One hundred live and die impressed me. Inevitability and unexpectedness of death can happen to anyone in anytime. The darkness of the death is covered by the bright and colorful neon lights. It reminded me a Korean student who fell at Grand Canyon. I read an article about him a day after I went to the Grand Canyon this January. We were at the same place but he was almost dead (he is almost recovered now) but this can happen to me. Every second somebody dies somewhere on earth and no one knows who is next. I had this horrible thinking from this work.

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One Hundred Live and Die (1984)

One Hundred Live and Die is 118” x 132” x 21” (300 cm x 335 cm x 53 cm) which takes up the majority of any wall. This neon flashing abstract piece of art was constructed in 1984 and gives off a unique perception of life and different ways we can look at it. When I saw this construction, it made me think of how people can look at life in a negative and positive way, from everything we do ends in death to us finding the joy in others and living life to the fullest. The flow of the neon lights changing catches the attention of the audience and makes it a master piece because of the thought that was put behind it. As Bruce Nauman did sketches, he was more drawn to the abstract things in life and wanted to make people think and to tell a story, a story that would be unique to someone viewing this work and seeing it from their point of view in life. One Hundred Live and Die made me realize that no matter what we do we are living In the moment subconsciously, but no matter where we go in life and no matter what we experience we are always headed towards death.

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Bruce Nauman

White Anger, Red Danger, Yellow Peril, Black Death

1984

Medium

Steel beams, aluminum, paint, and wire

Dimensions

62 3/4" x 17' 11 1/8" x 16' (159.4 x 546.4 x 487.7 cm)

Credit

Gift of Werner and Elaine Dannheisser

Object number

111.1990.a-f

When I first saw the device, the image come to my mind is the workers sitting on the I-beam, which I saw a similar photo when I visited the Rockefeller Center. This should be a lively construction scenario, very positive or leisurely. But this device has no workers, what instead of is four different color chairs, black, white, red, yellow; these four chairs are not complete chairs, each chair is missing a part, or missing chair legs, or missing chair surface, and they are associated with this I-beam in various ways. This is a very interesting combination, and the missing part of the chair represents some specific unreasonable existence, I think this is what the "Disappearing Acts" about.

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Bruce Nauman, One Hundred Live and Die, 1984. Neon tubing with clear glass tubing on metal monolith.

Nauman's unconventional art caught me off guard at first. From seeing the beginning of his career, you can tell he could draw and paint, but he chose to use everyday objects to create his art rather than going the "conventional" way.

The process of creation of "process art" in comparison to a  painting, I believe are both work intensive in their individual ways, and thought provoking in the same respect. Just like a painting, the artist has to think about the three dimensionality of the piece and how he wants the viewer to perceive it. What does he want the viewer to feel when looking at the piece and from what angles.

For example One Hundred Live and Die invites the viewer to think about the importance of our life choices, you smile, you die - At the end of the day we are all destined to die. But his art invites us to think, do we want to sleep and die or smile and die?

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Katty Liang

Days 2009
Bruce Nauman

Medium: Stereo audio files, speakers, amplifiers, and additional equipment. Dimensions variable

I think Nauman put a lot of time in making these pieces of sculpture even though there is not nothing on each panel other than white paper. I can’t determine how much time and effort Nauman needed to finish something like this because the first question that came to my mind when I entered to the room was; “is this art?”. Clearly you don’t see anything special other than white panels hanging on and perfectly aligned. If we compare his art to the traditional art like for example the renaissance, artist take many years to finish one commission and you are able to see the effort by the first gaze. however, Nauman challenge himself by creating something never done before. like for example this sculpture, it is something that you can feel it with your eyes closed. He used sound installation where each row of panel emits a surge of voice reciting the days of the week out of order. Those voices are recorded by men, women and children. The combination of all make it seems like a kind of musical canon. It was interesting by walking through each panel and hearing different voices repeating the days of the week again and again. I disagree with his statement that every piece of art he made in his studio must be art. If you can consider a simple draft is art, then is only art in your eyes. I am not an artist so I don’t know what can be consider as art. However, I am a fashion design student, I don’t think everything I draw has to be made into a real thing. There are more thought and time to do something good. However, I agree with the idea that making art is an activity, but it also need to be a product in my point of view.

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Light Trap For Henry Moore, No. 1,
1967, Black and white photograph,

162.6 x 101.6 cm. (64 x 40 in.), Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Marlyand

When it comes to Nauman’s art, I don’t really feel qualified to make a definitive statement on the amount of labor it took, though I imagine the amount of work that went into it is much greater than one might first assume when looking at it. I certainly don’t feel qualified to make a value judgment regarding its legitimacy as art. But I certainly think I am able to appreciate his penchant for creating spectacle.

I will be the first to admit that I don’t always “get” modern art. I struggle with the fact that without a detailed explanation from the artist themself, I usually don’t comprehend the message behind it. Yet perhaps the disconnect between my interpretation of the art and the artist’s own intentions is one of the fundamental values of art such as Nauman’s. What makes his work “art”, I suppose, is less the technical skill that went into making it (though I’m sure there was much of that) and more the thing that it reveals about is as we observe it.

Nauman clearly wanted to thwart expectations regarding what we commonly perceive of as art and to challenge us to consider the philosophical difference between the way we perceive something when we see it as random or utilitarian versus when we are told that it is art. It’s almost like a quantum principle in that the act of observing it with an artistic lens alters it’s meaning.

This particular piece comes with a self-descriptive title, as well as a short explanation written by the curator of the exhibit at the MoMa, without which I probably wouldn’t have been able to interpret its meaning. But that doesn’t mean I would not have perceived it as art. It just means my interpretation of it would have been very different. Even without necessarily considering the implications of calling it art, upon viewing it I immediately began making connections in my own mind to experiences I’d had such as taking photos of people waving around sparklers or glow sticks. From there I began building my own associations, entirely without prompting. These kinds of associations, when considered at length, can begin to build into a more concrete interpretation of a piece of art which is entirely unrelated to the artist’s own intentions, but I think that Nauman would be ok with that. It is the process of experiencing and interpreting the art that requires effort and leads to value, not necessarily the amount of effort that went into actually creating it.

So when it comes to the question of whether Nauman’s work took more or less labor than other art by comparison, I almost feel as though the question is irrelevant - but to try to answer it as best I can, I would say that it is possible that it took less labor in a very literal sense (depending on the particular piece), but the labor that went into the conception and planning of it is possibly even more than it would be for a more traditional work. It is hard to quantify. But ultimately I think the notion that art such as this is less valid than other art because it “probably didn’t take that much effort” is illegitimate, because its value lies precisely in its apparent lack of conventional, obvious effort, and how that challenges the lenses through which we filter art.

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Bruce Nauman, Days Stereo audio files, speakers, amplifiers, and additional equipment

This is a piece that in particular stood out to me, the cacophony of sounds as you approach the room is so intriguing. You hear a variety of voices ranging from men, women, high pitched, low pitched, fast, and slow and all together fill the room with indistinct sound until you walk up to each of the panels to hear an individual's voice saying the days of the week out of order. This "sound sculpture" is definitely a unique form of art. In general we are so used to classical paintings being the be all end all type of art but Bruce Nauman takes it to another level. As other artists were reinventing what is considered art such as Andy Warhol did, so did Bruce Nauman when he was starting out. He saw art more of a way to record his physical existence which is a very interesting way to look at art, but this "sound sculpture" was definitely something new to me. Now art isn't something even physical to look at, it is just white panels with sound coming off them. In this form of art instead of standing in front of a painting or statue you have to physically move around the room to each panel to hear what they are even saying. Again it is interesting because you always think about the labor going into an actual painting or sculpture, but what about this piece? I imagine he'd have taken the time to first find people and then to record them, as well as acquiring and setting up the speakers. Also he'd have to figure out the right placement for each panel so that you wouldn't hear more than 1 voice at a time, yet still hear the cacophony of voices in the air. I've read reviews of this work that describe this piece as meaningless, or irritating, however personally I find it very interesting in the way he plays with our concept of time by scrambling the orders of the days of the week and also very interesting how as you walk around the sounds in the room are always changing between each person's unique voice.
Additionally I do agree with the statement “If I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art. At this point art became more of an activity and less of a product.” because you are doing something with intention and if that is to get a point across, another way to view things, or simply something interesting and different to look at I think anything can be art, and it is not only the final product but everything in between that is apart of that art.

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My favorite art piece from MOMA will be this

Bruce Nauman

White Anger, Red Danger, Yellow Peril, Black Death

1984

Bruce Nauman began his career in the mid-1960s, Nauman’s work has retained a fierce radicality throughout the ensuing four decades, even as it has constantly and dramatically transformed its own means and appearance

During the 1980s, when Nauman was in his forties, his work often directly voiced his concern over profound sociopolitical problems. White Anger, Red Danger, Yellow Peril, Black Death, belongs to a group of sculptures that use I-beams and chairs to address the practice of torture, still employed by governments worldwide. "I thought of using a chair that would somehow become the figure," Nauman said, "torturing a chair and hanging it up or strapping it down."for Nauman the work of art does its job by calling attention to issues that may otherwise remain unseen and unspoken.

"If I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art. " It shows how passion that he had and I could see his art require a lot of work but i'm sure he would like to do it alone that caused him wants to work entire the time in his studio.

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I couldn't make it to MOMA this morning so I went there this evening my own.
According to his quote ' If I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art.'

This is just giant size of two wooden boards next to each other. There was very narrow space(almost only a person can barely walk) between the two boards .
I think this artwork perfectly represents the theme 'Disappearing Art'
If you get inside/between the two boards, you are completely blocked from the world. Everything disappeared or you are disappeared.
Obviously, this art work is nothing to do with traditional form as sculpture nor labor-intense. I am sure no one before 20th century ever consider this two giant wooden board as an art. Speaking of labor process, I don't think making(literal way) process itself didn't  take long time but his brain storming process for his intention that people to feel isolation from the world could be much longer than we assume. However, what I think is that he just walked between the two boards,feeling the space he was walking in and the idea suddenly poped up on his mind.
Bruce Nauman’s Kassel Corridor (1972)

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Bruce Nauman

One Hundred Live and Die, 1984

Neon tubing with clear glass tubing on metal, 118 x 132 ¼ x 21in, Collection Benesse Holdings, Inc. / Benesse House Museum, Naoshima (near Okayama in Japan)

The foundation of Bruce Nauman’s work rigorously questions people's aesthetic and moral values. Since most of his ideas aren’t direct representations of ideas but of abstract thought, I think his installations are labor intensive, but definitely more thought intensive. There are some works of his where the ideas are so grand and abstract, the labor must be heavy too. I believe the labor and thought process increase according to each other in Bruce Nauman’s works. In the work of "Life and Death", a hundred sentences arranged horizontally repeat the process of lightening and extinguishing like the signboard of the airport terminal. These short and direct neon sentences are continually repeated, and hope and despair appear to be evenly matched in the neon light, illuminating the space of the exhibition hall. Nauman’s choice of medium is not specific but instead, he likes to experiment and test out both modern and traditional art making tools to get his message across. There are many definitions to “working” and I think just the development and planning out of his installations should be considered as “artist working in the studio”. No matter what time these values ​​are formed, the time and relevance of Nauman's works will never diminish because he intentionally created a range of concepts challenging different eras and idea bubbles.

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Bruce Nauman: Seven Figures, 1985

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Bruce Nauman: The True Artist helps the World by Revealing the Mystic Truths, 1967, Neon & Clear glass tubing suspension supports: 149. 86 x 139.7 x 5.08.

If I was working on a piece like this, I know it would take a lot of hours, working night and day and hard labor in fitting and putting the words in place.  It must be very delicate work making the words and lettering, including circling the straight line in the middle.  The art piece is more involved with labor, because it speaks to elitism in art in the materials he using. And it represents the low culture and advertising during his time.  Bruce Nauman set up this piece as a message to art and artist.  He wanted any other artist to believe that they can be artists too and inspire artists to find their own voice or own style.  I believe Nauman’s art is very activist, because it has a message and makes a statement.  This piece is characteristic of Nauman’s early neon work, in a typical tone of dry satire.  I agree with his quote, because anybody could be an artist, if they want to be.  I think this piece is art, because it inspires me and sends a message.

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Bruce Nauman
One Hundred Live and Die, 1984. Neon tubing with clear glass tubing on metal, 118 × 132 1/4 × 21 in. (299.7 × 335.9 × 53.3 cm), Collection Benesse Holdings, Inc. / Benesse House Museum, Naoshima (near Okayama in Japan)

I think Nauman spends much more time and pours laborious effort in creating art works in new materials. It would have been easier if he painted or wrote all these words by himself on canvas.

In the AIDS epidemic in the 80s, he creates rainbow-color neon signs as if these are candy wraps or bubble gums. The serious message of life and death is deliberately hidden under bright colors. However, the more the viewer ponders on the individual message, the more s/he feels the burden of the life or the weight of someone's existence. A large dimension of his work also sets an ambitious tone of his struggle to address the philosophical question of life and death. In this context, I think his labor is much more burdensome than any other types of art making. If someone chooses to carve this messages out of marble, Nauman chooses to work with popular, mundane materials. But the messages are equally grave and colossal.