Nadmiar i zubożenie : ciało sztuki Bruce'a Naumana

Abstract

The essay attempts to follow Bruce Nauman' s work as developing techniques that would enable the artist to remain personal while abandoning representation whose implications are always narcissistic. Nauman accompli­shes it gradually by means of activities performed by the artist's body, the hired performers' bodies and finally by constructing restricting environments for the body of the spectator. The aim of these practices is, by means of deprivation or overload (or both) of the human sensory apparatus, to make one aware of oneself as more than one's image allows one to experience. The final part of the essay is concerned with Nauman's aggressive works in the media of mass culture, which sarcastically comment on the failure of emancipation of the consumer's body from the torture of the image.