Bruce Nauman Quotes

#1. There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.

Mark Twain

#2. In art, the only one who really knows whether what you've done is honest is the artist.

Bruce Nauman

#3. My videos always involve some idea of a human being in a unusual situation-and what happens.

Bruce Nauman

#4. With just the 'Carmagnole' to sing he will only overthrow Louis XVI; but give him the 'Marseillaise' and he will liberate the world.

Victor Hugo

#5. I think that when a film does its job, it poses questions rather than gives answers. It should act as a frustrating counselor who, at your bidding for advice, says, 'What do you think?' I think that's some of what the culture critic Greg Tate meant by art leaving a 'metaphysical stain.'

Aunjanue Ellis

#6. In the studio, I don't do a lot of work that requires repetitive activity. I spend a lot of time looking and thinking and then try to find the most efficient way to get what I want, whether it's making a drawing or a sculpture, or casting plaster or whatever.

Bruce Nauman

#7. The fear of death is for all of us everywhere, but for the great intelligence of the opium eater it is beautifully narrowed into the crux of drugs.

John Cheever

#8. I've always been interested in what happens in the studio.

Bruce Nauman

#9. I like to use my hands and make things ... It might seem pretty stupid or pointless but that doesn't matter ... some of the most interesting work is the stuff that starts like that - out of a raw need for activity.

Bruce Nauman

#10. If I was an artist, and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art.

Bruce Nauman

#11. I don't like to think about being an influence. It's embarrassing.

Bruce Nauman

#12. If you choose the wrong questions and you proceed, you still get a result, but it's not interesting.

Bruce Nauman

#13. But if you can find that spot - I suppose it's like running - I used to be a swimmer and swim laps, and you just have to be there with what you're doing.

Bruce Nauman

#14. If you really want to do it, you do it. There are no excuses.

Bruce Nauman

#15. I don't live for the stage. I don't live for an audience.

David Bowie

#16. My eye was drawn to a bright green hue, the same shade as a poisonous Amazonian frog, the tiny, delightfully deadly ones.

Gail Honeyman

#17. Generalised anger and frustration is something that gets you in the studio, and gets you to work - though it's not necessarily evident in anything that's finished.

Bruce Nauman

#18. Pete and Repeat were sitting on a wall. Pete fell off. Who was left? Repeat.

Bruce Nauman

#19. It has to be real, and I think a lot of the problems we have as a society is because we don't acknowledge that family is important, and it has to be people who are present, you know, and mothers and fathers, both are not present enough with children.

James Earl Jones

#20. Leaving one religion for the sake of another one is like breaking with a rapist for the sake of dating a misogynist.

M.F. Moonzajer

#21. I'd love to work with Pharrell, but it's annoying because everyone is working with him now, and you don't want to be like, 'Oh, I want to work with you, too.' But he is the dream.

Eliza Doolittle

#22. I eventually shifted to video. Video opened up new conditions, or freed me from old conditions ...

Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook

#23. What I am really concerned about is what art is supposed to be - and can become.

Bruce Nauman

#24. A good teacher is like a good artist. They go right to the most difficult part of whatever's going on.

Bruce Nauman

#25. From this day forward, speak to yourself in a way that you would someone you care about.

Chalene Johnson

#26. But part of the enjoyment I take in it is finding the most efficient way to do it, which doesn't mean the corrections aren't made. I like to have a feeling of the whole task before I start, even if it changes.

Bruce Nauman

#27. And I don't have any specific steps to take because I don't start the same way every time. But there is a knowing when it's enough and you can leave it alone.

Bruce Nauman

#28. I think humor is used a lot of the time to keep people from getting too close. Humor side-steps and shifts the meaning.

Bruce Nauman

#29. I never dreamed about being a millionaire - I dreamed about being a football player.

Victor Cruz

#30. And the part about being a professional artist is that you can tell and you can do it over again, even if you can't say how you got there exactly.

Bruce Nauman

#31. Learn to recognise when you need to know something.

Bruce Nauman

#32. The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths.

Bruce Nauman

#33. When I was in art school, I thought art was something I would learn how to do, and then I would just do it. At a certain point I realized that it wasn't going to work like that. Basically, I would have to start over every day and figure out what art was going to be.

Bruce Nauman

#34. In this case we're building a corner to stretch a fence and hang a gate. It had a real purpose in the ranch here. I needed to do this. But at the same time, it made a beautiful structure.

Bruce Nauman

#35. And so I put down some of the things that he said, about keeping your tools sharpened and not letting them lie on the ground where they get hurt or get abused and dirty and can't find them. And some thoughts about how his father used to do things.

Bruce Nauman

#36. One of the factors that still keeps me in the studio is that every so often I have to more or less start all over.

Bruce Nauman

#37. What is it that an artist does when he is left alone in his studio? My conclusion was that if I was an artist and I was in the studio, then everything I was doing in the studio should be art ... From that point on, art became more of an activity and less of a product.

Bruce Nauman

#38. With him in defense, we could play Arthur Askey in goal.
(after signing Ron Yeats)

Bill Shankly

#39. I want to be in the studio. I want to be doing something. You just do whatever is at hand, and you don't even worry about whether it's going to be interesting or not interesting to anybody else-or even yourself. You just have to make something.

Bruce Nauman

#40. Did you stop because it was good enough, or could have done more - but then maybe ruined it too? Sometimes you finish because you've gone too far.

Bruce Nauman

#41. My work is basically an outgrowth of the anger I feel about the human condition. The aspects of it that make me angry are our capacity for cruelty and the ability people have to ignore situations they don't like.

Bruce Nauman

#42. And then what makes the work interesting is if you choose the right questions.

Bruce Nauman