Bruce Nauman - Influences

Influences

Nauman cites

• Samuel Beckett
• Ludwig Wittgenstein - Throughout Nauman's long career, to a greater or lesser extent Nauman has credited Wittgenstein as an influence of his work. He has spoke of this influence in several interviews, in a 1970 interview Nauman speaks to the broader sense of Wittgenstein’s influence, “Just the way Wittgenstein proceeds in thinking about things, his awareness of how to think about things. I don’t think you can point to any specific piece that’s the result of reading Wittgenstein, but it has to do with some sort of process of how to go about thinking about things.” This was also a sentiment that was stated in a 1980 article. Nauman makes these statements even though he has pointed to a piece that was directly influenced in a 1966 interview where Nauman speaks about the piece “A rose has no teeth”. Which was a direct quote of one of Wittgenstein’s “language games”. No matter how much credit he has given to this relationship, it is something that art writers have continued to see in his work all through his career, especially in his linguistic works, whether written or spoken. Arthur C. Danto speaks of Nauman’s work and his relationship to Wittgenstein in an article written in 1995, “A great deal of the work of Bruce Nauman consists in issuing commands,...it is perhaps helpful to consider those works as having at times the framework and logic of language games--which means, since the works are often directed at us, that we are meant to do something in response...designed as language games, they address us less as viewers than participants. To experience a Nauman is to interact with it in some way that goes beyond appreciating it as a work of art.” In a similar line of thinking Janet Krynak in the book “Please pay attention please” makes a case that a set of works has a similar effect by the fact that all the pieces “Contain Directive or imperative verbs, calling out ‘You.’” Bringing the viewer into this language game that Nauman is setting up.
• John Cage
• Philip Glass
• La Monte Young
• Meredith Monk

as major influences on his work. Nauman was a part of the Process Art Movement.