Bruce Nauman: Disappearing Acts – Hardcover

To look inside this book, click here. Chosen by the New York Times as one of the Best Art Books of 2018 Edited by Kathy Halbreich with Isabel Friedli, Heidi Naef, Magnus Schaefer, and Taylor Walsh. With contributions by Thomas Beard, Briony Fer, Nicols Guagnini, Kathy Halbreich, Rachel Harrison, Ute Holl, Suzanne Hudson, Julia Keller, Liz Kotz, Ralph Lemon, Glenn Ligon, Catherine Lord, Roxana Marcoci, Magnus Schaefer, Felicity Scott, Martina Venanzoni, Taylor Walsh, Jeffrey WeissBruce Nauman is widely acknowledged as a central figure in contemporary art, and the stringent questioning of valuesboth aesthetic and moralthat has long sustained his project remains urgent today. For more than fifty years, Nauman has explored how mutable experiences of time, space, sound, movement, and language provide an insecure foundation for our understanding of our place in the world.This richly illustrated catalogue, which includes rare and previously unpublished images, offers a comprehensive view of the artist’s work in all mediaincluding drawings; early fiberglass sculptures; sound environments; architecturally scaled, participatory constructions; rhythmically blinking neons; and a recent 3-D video that harks back to one of Nauman’s earliest performances. A wide range of authorsartists, curators, and historians of art, architecture, and filmfocus on topics that have been largely neglected, such as the architectural structures that posit real or imaginary spaces as models for ethical inquiry and mechanisms of control. Curator Kathy Halbreich’s introductory essay explores Nauman’s many acts of disappearance, withdrawal, and deflection as revelatory of his central formal and intellectual concerns. Eighteen further contributions tease out the various themes that run through this protean and elusive artist’s work. 356 pp.; 250 illus.