REVIEWS

BRUCE NAUMAN, FAILING TO LEVITATE IN THE STUDIO. 1966. BLACK-AND-WHITE PHOTOGRAPH, 20 X24 IN. I 2006 BRUCE NAUMAN/ARTIST RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK.

SAN FRANCISCO

A ROSE HAS NO TEETH: BRUCE NAUMAN IN THE 1960SUC BERKELEYART MUSEUM AND PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE

Walking around San Francisco, it was hard not to be aware of the current BruceNauman retrospective at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.Posters advertising the show were plastered all over the city, bearing the slogan "Thesixties redefined America. Bruce Nauman redefined the sixties." PR hype aside, it'sundeniable that "A Rose Has No Teeth: Bruce Nauman in the 1960s" is a show longoverdue. It brings together more than 100 pieces spanning the years 1965-1970,including a large number of little-known artist books, drawings, photographs,and early collaborative films-several of which have never been exhibited before,and some of which are previously unknown-as well as near-canonical sculptures,neons, installations, and performance pieces exploring familiar Nauman themeslike repetition, language, the body, endurance, and interior versus exterior.

BAM/PFA promotes the show as "the first ever to focus on the years Naumanlived in the San Francisco Bay Area," which is a little misleading. Yes, Naumanspent his formative years in northern California, first as a graduate student at UCDavis from 1964 to 1966, and later in San Francisco teaching sculpture at the SanFrancisco Art Institute. But it's safe to say that by 1968 he was starting to cut histies to the Bay Area. Nauman spent the latter part of that year at Roy Lichtenstein's

studio in Southampton, equipped, importantly, with one of the earliest consumervideo cameras, furnished by his New York dealer, Leo Castelli. Nauman was one ofthe first artists in the country to use this new technology. Video, and in particularthe ability to record without assistance for an hour at a time, enabled him todevelop some of his most iconic performance pieces during this period. Many ofthe Hamptons videos appear in the exhibition: Stamping in the Studio (1968),for example, a black-and-white video that shows Nauman performing the titularaction continuously over the course of an hour. In late 1969 Nauman left northernCalifornia for good. Still, his years in the Bay Area form a very particular periodin his career; one that includes not only many of the pieces now thought of ascanonically Nauman but also many of those made before the artist had perfectedhis canonical Nauman. "A Rose Has No Teeth" provides insight into a moment inwhich both Nauman's persona and his body of work were still more porous andexperimental than they became over the following decades.

Perhaps one of the most striking aspects of the exhibition is the markeddifference in tone and approach between solo Bruce-Nauman alone in his studio-and social Bruce-Nauman collaborating with Bay Area artist friends and mentorslike William Allan and William T. Wiley. Early collaborative films like FishingforAsian Carp (1966), Smoke (1966), and Untitled (FlourArrangements) (1967)combine laconic humor with a kind of breeziness. "Breezy" not being an adjectivereadily associated with Nauman, these films are a nice surprise. When Naumanwas alone in his studio, this carefree quirkiness often gave way to a terse and much

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REVIEWS

darker approach. "Funny as hell," someone once called Nauman, and that pretty

much sums it up. Pieces like SlowAngle Walk (Beckett Walk) (1968), for instance, inwhich the artist performs a stiff, John Cleese-style walk, continuously swaying hislegs up then back for an hour, beg one to question the function of humor in light ofduration. In other words, when does the joke stop being funny and become painful?

Some would argue the laughs taper off near the end of the time frame underexamination at BAM/PFA, when Nauman directs his assaults increasingly towardthe audience, exploring the outer limits of the artist-spectator relationship. Get Out

ofMy Mind, Get Out of This Room (1968), a small room filled only with the soundof Nauman's hoarse repetitive hissing of the words in the title, is a particularlydisturbing example.

One of the strongest undercurrents of'"A Rose Has No Teeth" portrays Nauman as

a type of protopunk engaged in an intense investigation of failure, breakdown, andwhat can perhaps best be described anachronistically as slacker fatigue. Probablythe most literal work in this respect is the clownish photograph Failing to Levitatein the Studio (1966), but an attitude of dejection is equally present in his early

sculptures, smudged, repetitive, but going nowhere; in the fiberglass casts thatexude so much listlessness one suspects they'd rather be draped over a couch; and in

the pointless boredom-induced repetition of the Southampton videos and the mentalculs-de-sac of Nauman's puns. Seen in this light, it's hardly surprising his work hasbeen an inspiration for many artists of the "Helter Skelter" generation and continues

to be so for artists today.Despite its many coups in landing important works, "A Rose Has No Teeth" shows

signs of the obstacles encountered by any small institution developing an ambitious

show: some iconic pieces were simply not lent out (the 1967 From Hand to Mouth,for example), and the show is traveling to just two other venues, only one of which isin the US (the Menil Collection in Houston). Curator Constance Lewallen's carefulselection compensates for obvious missing pieces by including studies and drawings;the limited itinerary is more regrettable and should provoke some soul-searching.This show is one of the most important of the season: a rigorously researched and

thoughtfully curated consideration of an impressive body of work. It deserves awider audience than those dogged enough to make the trek to Berkeley, Houston, orTurin (at the Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea). Not only is this earlyprotean Nauman compulsively addictive, but it is also exactly this body of work that

continues to influence contemporary practices today. -YASMINE VAN PEE

AMANDA ROSS-HO, MANTLE, 2007. INCISEDSHEETROCK, MOUNTED AND FRAMED ARCHIVALLIGHT-JET PRINT, DIMENSIONS VARIABLE. PHOTOROBERT WEDEMEYER, COURTESY CHERRY ANDMARTIN, LOS ANGELES.

LOSANGELES

AMANDA ROSS-HOCHERRYAND MARTIN

Amanda Ross-Ho's recent show, "NothinFuckin Matters," expanded on her abilityto create disparate unions, mixing inher assemblages not only media butalso unexpected formal and culturalreferences (think John McCracken'ssensibility as interpreted by PunkyBrewster, or Claes Oldenburg raiding alumberyard) to create subtly rhetoricalmoves. Sad Sack (all works 2007) is a six-foot-tall tote bag made from an oversizecanvas drop cloth used for commercial

TIM HAWKINSON, OCTOPUS, 2006. PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLAGE MOUNTED ON FOAM, 7 FT101/2 IN X14 FTX21/2 IN. COURTESYTHE ARTIST, LOSANGELES, © 2007TIM HAWKINSON.

painting. Inside are "sculpture remnants":pieces of bandanna-covered planks,

two-by-fours, and sheets of drywallthat become haphazardly arrayed boneswithin the bag's wrinkled skin. The showalso features a group of archival ink-jet

prints-images like the frowning arrowsfound on an Amazon.com shipping

box-which the artist hung on Sheetrockpanels that leaned against the gallery'spermanent walls. Giving this partialarchitecture a sculptural weight, Ross-Ho cut notches and apertures into thebuilding material and inserted objectsinto the openings (high-top sneakers

splattered with paint, a cushion shapedlike a trout, and a small fish charm).

The heavy, material quality of Ross-Ho's sculptures is offset by her smartplay with negative space. Above the work

Mantle-a hole cut into the gallery wallthat exposed insulation and studs-the

artist hung an image of the earth printedin photographic negative. The structuralinterruption and the print engaged ina pun-the hearth and the earth-thatflaunts Ross-Ho's mischievous attentionto language, an essential milieu in whichher work operates. -CATHERINE TAFT

TIM HAWKINSON: ZOOPSIAGETTY CENTER

Tim Hawkinson's exhibition of new workwas inspired by both zoology and anunconscious penchant for random visualassociations-a trait that Hawkinsonand animals apparently share. "Zoopsia,"the exhibition's title, refers to the studyof visual hallucinations in animals. Thefrenetic shapes and drippy lines in thepainting Dragon (2007) read as a tangleof vines, but on further contemplationthe tea-colored surface yields the formsof mythical animals engaged in an epicstruggle. The photographic collageOctopus (2006) presents a tentacled seapredator made from scanned picturesof Hawkinson's hands and his own(slightly disgusting) pink, puckeredlips. By contrast, the understatedhandmade sculpture Leviathon (2007)is a conceptual and visual pun. Thespinal columns and rib cage of whatappears to be an extinct species of fishare reimagined as a bowed processionof galley slaves, the long tapering ribsforming the oars. The jawbone is formedby the bent legs of an inverted malefigure whose head is nestled in towardthe body. Leviathon, while seemingto be made of plaster, is made of thequotidian craft supplies Sculpey andCrayola Model Magic, inserting a bit ofhumor into what would otherwise be adry, academic showdown between artand science. -SHANA NYS DAMBROT

98 MODERN PAINTERS I MAY2007

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TITLE: A ROSE HAS NO TEETH: BRUCE NAUMAN IN THE1960S: UC BERKELEY ART MUSEUM

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