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June 29, 2006
Bruce at the Tate
Bruce being Bruce Nauman. The Tate in this instance being Tate Liverpool, down in the Albert Dock where, in the seventies, it was rumoured, Liverpool Art College was to move in. It never did, but the Tate Gallery opened it’s Liverpool collection in 1988.
In the seventies, when speculation was rife as to the use of the worlds first non-combustible dock [Albert Dock was revolutionary at the time of it’s construction, 1846, using no wood – just cast iron, stone and brick] Bruce Nauman was videoing himself [itself a revolutionary new medium] walking round his studio for an hour [the length of a video cassette] playing one note on a violin.
Or stepping repeatedly round the sides of a square marked on the studio floor in time to a metronome.
All this was Good Stuff if only because it hadn’t been done before and was in the vanguard of conceptual art. Unfortunately people are still doing it today. Which is a bit like painting the Mona Lisa again – skilful but pointless.
Bruce Nauman said: I am an artist, I am in my studio, so anything I do in here is art, and proceeded to jump up and down for an hour [the length, if you recall, of a video cassette]. He was fortunate in that his hard work [try jumping up and down for an hour] met opportunity and he was noticed by the Big Boys. The rest is history, he is now considered by some to be one of the most important artists alive.
This leaves us with three things:
INNOVATION
DERIVATION
IMITATION
Imitation is relatively easy, derivation is harder because it requires a degree of input, innovation is hardest of all because there is no measure to help quantify the work produced. This is why there are more imitators in the world than there are innovators. Innovation takes guts.
Posted by john at June 29, 2006 12:16 AM