Stuart Collection: Bruce Nauman - Vices and Virtues

Essential texts on the work of Bruce Nauman, spanning the five decades of the artist's career. This volume collects essential texts on the work of Bruce Nauman (b. 1941), an artist of exceptional range whose work continues to probe the fundamentals of both life and art. These critical writings, scholarly essays, and an interview span five decades of Nauman's career, ranging from the first substantive feature on his work, published in 1967, to a catalog essay from his 2018 retrospective. Written by prominent critics, art historians, and curators, the individual texts consider his work in various media, from photography and artists' books to sculpture, video, and room-scaled installations. Taken together, the essays trace the arc of critical reception given to Nauman's work, charting the (somewhat uneven) path to his current eminence as one of our truly indispensable living artists.

Since the late 1960s Bruce Nauman has established a completely new understanding of contemporary art and has been acknowledged as one of the most relevant artists of the twentieth century. Both the last modern artist and - because of his ceaseless experimental approach to new media - the very first contemporary artist, Nauman has been noted for his landmark conceptual approach against which much contemporary art of today can be measured.

A highly acclaimed and extremely prolific artist, Bruce Nauman (b. 1941) has been active since the early 1970s. Working in mediums such as sculpture, video, film, installation, performance, and printmaking, he shies away from developing a single characteristic style. His work toys with text and fragmented images of the human body. Often provocative in nature, he connects physical realities of violence, sex, and death with visceral, spiritual messages, like an early neon sign proclaiming, 'the true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths.' On top of many achievements in his career, Nauman recently represented the United States at the 2009 Venice Biennale and was awarded the Golden Lion prize for best national pavilion. This book accompanies Nauman's major exhibition at the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, showing in Paris from 15 March to 14 June 2015.

Bruce Naumann talks about the creation of his project for the Stuart Collection entitled, Vices and virtues, and details of its construction are shown